2032873 


READERS 

AND 
WRITERS 


SOME  RECENT 
BORZOI  BOOKS 


THE  OPINIONS  OF  ANATOLE  FRANCE 
Paul   Gsell 

MAX  BEERBOHM   IN   PERSPECTIVE 
Bohun   Lynch 

THE   CRITIC  AND  THE   DRAMA 
George   Jean    Nathan 

PASTICHE      AND     PREJUDICE 
A.   B.    Walkley 

THE    NO-PLAYS    OF    JAPAN 
Arthur   Waley 

READERS    AND    WRITERS 
A.  R.   Orage 

ON    ENGLISH    POETRY 
Robert    Graves 

AFOOT  IN   ENGLAND 
W.   H.  Hudson 

FRIDAY   NIGHTS 

Edward   Garnett 


Readers  and  Writers 

(1917-1921) 
by  A.  R.  Orage 


New  York        Alfred  •  A  •  Knopf  Mcmxxii 


COPYRIGHT,   1922,  BY 
ALFRED  A.  KNOPF,  ITXC. 

Published,  May.  19St 


Set  up  and  printed  6j»  the  Vail-Ballou  Co.,  Bingtiamton,  N.  Y. 
Paper  furnished  bv  W.  F.  h'.therlnnlon  A  Co.,  tft<o  I'orl:.  ff  Y. 
Bound  5»  the  H.  Wolff  Estate,  New  York,  A'.  Y. 


MANUFACTURED  IN  THE  UNITED   STATES  OF  AMERICA 


Stack 


PN 
511 


Preface 

UNDER  the  title  of  "Readers  and  Writers"  and  over 
the  initials  "R.  H.  C."—  the  "C"  occasionally  becom- 
ing "Congreve"  for  other  purposes  —  I  contributed  to 
the  New  Age,  during  a  period  of  seven  or  eight  years, 
a  weekly  literary  causerie  of  which  the  present  vol- 
ume, covering  the  years  1918-1921,  is  a  partial  re- 
print. My  original  design  was  to  treat  literary  events 
from  week  to  week  with  the  continuity,  consistency 
and  policy  ordinarily  applied  to  comments  on  current 
political  events;  that  is  to  say,  with  equal  seriousness 
and  from  a  similarly  more  or  less  fixed  point  of  view 
as  regards  both  means  and  end.  This  design  in- 
volved of  necessity  a  freedom  of  expression  distinctly 
out  of  fashion,  though  it  was  the  convention  of  the 
greatest  period  of  English  literature,  namely,  the 
Eighteenth  Century;  and  its  pursuits  in  consequence 
brought  the  comments  themselves  and  the  journal  in 
which  they  appeared  into  somewhat  lively  disrepute. 
That,  however,  proved  not  to  be  the  greatest  diffi- 
culty. Indeed,  within  the  last  few  years  an  almost 
general  demand  for  more  serious,  more  outspoken  and 
even  more  "savage"  criticism  has  been  heard,  and  is 
perhaps  on  the  way  to  being  satisfied,  though  literary 
susceptibilities  are  still  far  from  being  as  well-man- 
nered as  political  susceptibilities.  The  greatest  diffi- 


Preface 

culty  is  encountered  in  the  fact  that  literary  events, 
unlike  political  events,  occur  with  little  apparent 
order,  and  are  subject  to  no  easily  discoverable  or 
demonstrable  direction.  In  a  single  week  every  liter- 
ary form  and  tendency  may  find  itself  illustrated,  with 
the  consequence  that  any  attempt  to  set  the  week's 
doings  in  a  relation  of  significant  development  is 
bound  to  fall  under  the  suspicion  of  impressionism  or 
arbitrariness.  I  have  no  other  defence  against  these 
charges  than  Plato's  appeal  to  good  judges,  of  whom 
the  best  because  the  last  is  Time.  Time,  if  ever  it 
should  condescend  to  re-consider  the  judgments  con- 
tained herein,  will  pronounce  upon  them  as  only  those 
living  critics  can  whose  present  judgments  are  an 
anticipation  of  Time's.  Time  will  show  what  has  been 
right  and  what  wrong.  Already,  moreover,  a  certain 
amount  of  winnowing  and  sifting  has  taken  place. 
Some  literary  values  of  this  moment  are  not  what 
they  were  yesterday  or  the  day  before.  A  few  are 
greater;  many  of  them  are  less.  And  I  think  I  can 
afford  to  look  on  most  of  the  changes  with  equanimity. 
My  most  confident  prediction,  however,  remains  to 
be  confirmed:  it  is  that  the  perfect  English  style  is  still 
to  be  written.  That  it  may  be  in  our  own  time  is 
both  the  goal  and  the  guiding-star  of  all  literary 
criticism  that  is  not  idle  chatter. 

A.  R.  ORAGE. 

The  New  Age, 

38  CURSITOR  STREET,  E.  C.  4. 
December  1921. 


Contents 

Preface,  I 

Fontenelle,  3 

Biography,  4 

The  Responsibility  of  the  Press,  5 

Critics  Beware,  7 

Henry  James,  9 

Turgenev,  13 

Plotinus,  15 

The  New  Europe,  17 

The  Fashion  of  Anti-Puritanism,  18 

Popular  Philosophy,  20 

Was  Carlyle  Prussian?  21 

Is  Nietzsche  for  Germany?  23 

Nietzsche  in  Fragments,  24 

The  End  of  Fiction,  26 

The  Criteria  of  Culture,  27 

The  Fate  of  Sculpture,  30 

The  Too  Clever,  31 


Contents 

Homage  to  Propertius,  33 

Mr.  Pound  and  Mr.  Wyndham  Lewis 
in  Public,   36 

Mr.  Ezra  Pound  as  Metricist,  40 

Mr.  Ezra  Pound  on  Religion,  43 

Mr.  Pound,  Caricaturist,  45 

The  Admirable  Victorians,  46 

French  Clarte,  47 

When  Shall  We  Translate?  48 

Nature  in  Mind,  50 

Mr.  Clive  Bell's  Pot,  52 

The  Criticism  of  Poets,  54 

"  John  Eglinton,"  55 

Irish  Humour,  56 

The  Literary  Drama  of  Ireland,  57 

Mr.  Standish  O'Grady,  59 

Mr.  Standish  O'Grady,  Enchanter,  60 

Les  Sentiments  de  Julien  Benda,  62 

Convalescence  after  Newspaper,  63 

Nature  in  English  Literature,  67 

S.S.S.,  69 

Sterne  Criticism,  71 


Contents 

Sterne  on  Love  in  France,  73 

English  Style,  74 

Literary  Culs-de-sac,  76 

The  Decline  of  Free  Intelligence,  77 

Literary  Copyright  in  America,  81 

Right  Criticism,  86 

Man's  Survival  of  Bodily  Death,  88 

Beardsley  and  Arthur  Symons,  91 

"^E's"  "Candle  of  Vision,"  93 

How  to  Read,  107 

The  Old  Country,  109 

Looking  for  the  Dawn,  109 

Fielding  for  America,  112 

Poor  Authors!  113 

On  Guard,  115 

The  Coming  Renaissance,  117 

Leonardo  da  Vinci  as  Pioneer,  119 

"  Shakespeare  "  Simplified,  122 

The  "  London  Mercury  "  and  English,  123 

Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  on  Rome  and  Ger- 
many, 126 

The  Origins  of  Marx,  131 


Contents 

Marx  as  Politician,  133 

John  Mitchel  as  the  Same,  135 

Norse  in  English,  136 

The  Comedy  of  It,   138 

The  Epic  Serbs,  140 

Ernest  Dowson,  142 

A  Sentimental  Excursion,  144 

The  Newest  Testament,  147 

Nothing  Foreign,  150 

Psycho-Analysis,  151 

Psycho-Analysis  and  the  Mysteries,  152 

Gently  with  Psycho-Analysis,  155 

A  Cambridge  "  Cocoon,"  157 

An  Oxford  Miscellany,  162 

The  Impotence  of  Satire,  163 

The  "  Dial  "  of  America,  165 

America  Regressing,  171 

The  Best  is  Yet  to  Be,  174 

INDEX,  179 


READERS 

AND 
WRITERS 


Fontenelle 

There  is  a  reason  that  Fontenelle  has  never  before 
been  translated  into  English.  It  is  not  that  Mr.  Ezra 
Pound,  who  has  now  translated  a  dozen  of  Fontenelle's 
dialogues,  was  the  first  to  think  of  it.  Many  readers 
of  the  original  have  tried  their  hand  at  the  translation 
only  to  discover  that  somehow  or  other  Fontenelle 
would  not  "go"  in  English  as  he  goes  in  French.  The 
reason  is  not  very  far  to  seek.  Fontenelle  wrote  a 
French  peculiarly  French,  a  good  but  an  untranslat- 
able French.  He  must,  therefore,  be  left  and  read 
in  the  original  if  he  is  to  be  appreciated  at  his  intrinsic 
value.  Mr.  Pound  has  made  a  rash  attempt  at  the  im- 
possible in  these  dialogues,  and  he  has  achieved  the 
unreadable  through  no  further  fault  of  his  own.  The 
result  was  foregone.  The  dialogues  themselves  in 
their  English  form  are  a  little  more  dull  than  are  the 
Conversations  of  Landor,  which  is  to  say  that  they  are 
very  dull  indeed.  Nothing  at  the  first  glance  could  be 
more  attractive  than  dialogues  between  the  great  dead 
of  the  world.  To  every  tyro  the  notion  comes  inevita- 
bly sooner  or  later,  as  if  it  were  the  idea  for  which 
the  world  were  waiting.  Nevertheless,  on  attempting 
it,  the  task  is  found  to  be  beyond  most  human  powers. 
Nobody  has  yet  written  a  masterpiece  in  it.  Fonte- 
nelle was  not  in  any  case  the  man  to  succeed  in  it  from 
an  English  point  of  view.  We  English  take  the  great 

3 


4  Readers  and  Writers 

dead  seriously.  We  expect  them  to  converse  paradi- 
saically  in  paradise,  and  to  be  as  much  above  their  own 
living  level  as  their  living  level  was  above  that  of  or- 
dinary men.  Here,  however,  is  a  pretty  task  for  a 
writer  of  dead  dialogues,  for  he  has  not  only  to  imitate 
the  style,  but  to  glorify  both  the  matter  and  style  of 
the  greatest  men  of  past  ages.  No  wonder  that  he 
fails;  no  wonder  that  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases  he 
produces  much  the  same  impression  of  his  heroes  as  is 
produced  of  them  at  spiritualistic  seances.  The  at- 
tempt, however,  will  always  continue  to  be  made.  It 
is  a  literary  cactus-form  that  blooms  every  fifty  years 
or  so.  As  I  calculate  its  periodicity,  some  one  should 
shortly  be  producing  a  new  series. 


*** 


Biography 

Very  few  biographers  have  been  anywhere  near  the 
level  of  mind  of  their  subjects,  and  fewer  still  have 
been  able  to  describe  even  what  they  have  understood. 
The  character  of  a  great  man  is  so  complex  that  a 
genius  for  grasping  essentials  must  be  assumed  in  his 
perfect  biographer :  at  the  same  time,  it  is  so  tedious  in 
the  analysis  that  the  narrative  must  be  condensed  to 
represent  it.  Between  the  subtlety  to  be  described,  and 
the  simplicity  with  which  it  must  be  described,  the  char- 
acter of  a  man  is  likely  to  fall  in  his  portrait  into  the 
distortion  of  over-elaboration  or  into  the  sketch. 
Though  difficult,  however,  the  art  has  been  frequently 


Responsibility  of  the  Press  5 

shown  to  be  not  impossible.  We  could  not  ask  for  a 
better  portrait  of  Johnson  than  Boswell's.  Lockhart's 
Life  of  Scott  is  as  good  as  we  desire  it  to  be.  Plato's 
Socrates  is  truer  than  life;  and  there  are  others.  On 
the  whole,  the  modern  gossiping  method  is  not  likely 
to  become  popular  in  a  cultured  country. 


*   * 


The  Responsibility  of  the  Press 

From  his  little  brush  with  the  Press,  Dr.  Lyttelton 
has  come  off  badly.  It  was  not  because  his  case  was 
bad,  but  because  he  had  not  the  moral  courage  to  stick 
to  his  guns.  His  case  was  that  Parliament  had  practi- 
cally ceased  to  be  the  leader  of  the  nation,  and  that  its 
place  had  been  taken  by  the  Press.  Unfortunately, 
however,  the  Press  had  come  to  depend  for  its  living 
upon  sensationalism,  with  the  consequence  that  its  ten- 
dency was  to  prefer  fiction  to  fact.  A  perfectly  good 
case,  I  say,  who  know  more  of  Fleet  Street  than  Dr. 
Lyttelton  will  ever  know.  Every  word  of  the  indict- 
ment is  well  within  the  truth.  But  when  challenged 
by  the  Press  to  substantiate  his  charges,  Dr.  Lyttelton, 
instead  of  inviting  the  world  simply  to  look  at  the  Press 
and  to  contrast  its  reports  with  facts,  proceeded  to  ex- 
culpate the  editors  and  to  put  the  whole  blame  on  the 
public.  It  is  the  public,  he  said,  that  is  responsible, 
and  there  is  no  use  in  rating  the  editors,  who  merely 
supplied  what  the  public  wanted.  But  so  long  as  pub- 
lic men  adopt  this  cowardly  attitude  nothing  can  possi- 


6  Readers  and  Writers 

bly  be  done,  for  the  "public,"  like  a  corporation,  has 
neither  a  body  to  be  kicked  nor  a  soul  to  be  damned. 
Relatively  to  the  proprietors  and  editors  of  the  Press 
the  public  consists  of  irresponsible  individuals,  who 
merely  choose  from  among  what  is  laid  before  them. 
They  are  mostly  as  innocent  as  children  who  deal  at  a 
tuck-shop,  and,  perchance,  buy  sweets  and  cakes  that 
are  bad  for  them  as  readily  as  things  that  are  good  for 
them.  The  responsible  parties  are  the  proprietors 
and  editors,  and,  above  them,  the  law.  It  is  not  an 
offence  to  buy  articles  at  a  shop  that  are  illegally  dis- 
played for  sale.  The  public  supposition  is  that  if  they 
are  on  sale  they  can  be  bought.  And,  in  fact,  the 
Public  Prosecutor,  unlike  Dr.  Lyttelton,  does  not  pro- 
ceed against  the  purchasers  of  illegal  articles,  he 
proceeds  against  the  vendors.  In  the  case  of  our  news- 
paper proprietors  and  editors  the  conditions  of  shop- 
keeping  are  parallel;  they  expose  professed  news  and 
views  for  sale,  with  an  implied  guarantee  that  their 
goods  are  both  good  and  fit  for  human  consumption. 
The  public  cannot  be  expected  to  know  which  is  which, 
or  what  is  what,  any  more  in  the  case  of  news  and 
views  than  in  the  case  of  tea  and  potatoes.  Rather  less 
indeed,  since  the  ill-effects  of  false  news  and  unsound 
views  are,  as  a  rule,  too  long  delayed  and  too  subtle  to 
be  attributed  to  their  proper  causes.  But  the  Press 
proprietors  and  editors  know  very  well.  They  know 
whether  the  news  they  expose  is  true,  or  the  views  they 
vend  are  sound.  They  know  also  that  in  a  large  de- 
gree they  are  neither  the  one  nor  the  other.  Yet  they 
continue  to  sell  them,  and  even  to  expect  public  honours 


Critics  Beware  7 

for  their  fraudulent  dealings.  The  excuses  made  for 
them  are  such  as  could  be  made  for  any  other  fraudu- 
lent industry;  that  it  pays,  that  the  public  swallows  it, 
that  honesty  would  not  pay,  that  the  public  does  not 
want  truth  and  sincerity,  that  the  public  must  learn  to 
discriminate  for  itself.  Reduced  to  a  simple  state- 
ment, all  these  mean,  in  effect,  that  the  Press  is  pre- 
pared to  trade  on  the  ignorance  and  folly  of  the  public. 
So  long  as  editors  and  proprietors  are  allowed  to  sail 
off  from  responsibility  under  the  plea  that  they  are  only 
satisfying  a  public  demand,  so  long  will  it  be  possible 
for  purveyors  of  other  forms  of  indecent  literature 
and  vendors  of  other  articles  of  public  ill-fare  to  com- 
plain that  they  are  unfairly  treated.  There  is  likely 
to  be  always  a  demand  for  fiction  against  fact,  the 
plausible  lie  against  the  honest  truth,  the  doctored  news 
against  the  plain  statement,  and  the  pleasing,  superficial 
against  the  strenuous  profound.  A  change  of  taste  in 
these  respects  could  only  be  brought  about  by  a  deter- 
mined effort  in  education  extending  over  a  generation 
and  applied  not  only  to  schools,  but  to  the  Press,  the 
pulpit,  and  to  book-publishing.  But  because  the  pref- 
erence now  exists,  and  is  a  profitable  taste  to  pander 
to,  it  is  not  right  to  acquit  the  Press  that  thrives  on  it. 


*   * 


Critics  Beware 

Mr.  Crees,  the  author  of  a  new  study  of  George 
Meredith,-  has  first  pointed  out  one  of  the  dangers  in 


8  Readers  and  Writers 

writing  about  Meredith  and  then  fallen  into  it.  Every- 
body knows  what  it  is;  it  is  writing  in  epigram,  or,  as 
Mr.  Crees  calls  it,  "miscarrying  with  abortive  epi- 
gram." That  phrase  alone  should  have  warned  Mr. 
Crees  how  near  he  was  to  ignoring  his  own  counsel; 
but  apparently  he  saw  only  the  idea  and  not  the  fact, 
for  a  passage  soon  occurs  in  which  he  illustrates  the 
danger  perfectly.  He  is  writing  of  the  difficulty  en- 
countered by  a  certain  kind  of  intellectual — Meredith, 
for  example — in  winning  any  public  recognition;  and 
this  is  the  way  he  miscarries  on: 

The  idol  of  the  future  is  the  Aunt  Sally  of  the  present.  The 
pioneer  of  intellect  ploughs  a  lonely  furrow.  He  is  assailed  by 
invective,  beset  by  contumely,  the  butt  of  ridicule,  the  Saint 
Sebastian  of  the  slings  and  arrows  of  outrageous  criticism.  He 
is  depressed  by  disregard,  chilled  by  the  icy  waters  of  contempt, 
haunted  by  the  dread  of  beggary,  the  recompense  of  strictness 
of  conviction.  .  .  .  And  when  detraction  recites  its  palinode, 
his  sole  compensation  is  to  reply  (from  the  Elysian  fields),  "I 
told  you  so." 

There  are  many  untruths  contained  in  this  passage, 
some  flattering  and  others  not,  to  the  "intellectual," 
and  they  are  properly  expressed — if  untruths  ever  can 
be — in  the  style.  The  style  is  one  in  which  the  truth 
cannot  be  told;  and  it  perfectly  illustrates  the  axiom 
that  critical  writing  cannot  be  too  simple  and  unaf- 
fected. It  is  a  common  practice  for  a  critic  to  approxi- 
mate his  style  to  the  style  of  his  subject;  for  example, 
to  write  about  poetry  poetically,  about  a  "grand  im- 
passioned writer"  in  a  grand  and  impassioned  manner. 


Henry  James  9 

By  so  doing  it  is  supposed  that  a  critic  shows  his 
sympathy  and  his  understanding  of  his  subject.  But 
the  method  is  wrong.  Criticism  is  not  a  fine  art.  The 
conversational  tone  is  its  proper  medium,  and  it  should 
be  an  absolute  rule  never  to  write  in  criticism  what 
cannot  be  imagined  as  being  easily  said. 


* 
*   * 


Henry  James 

The  "Henry  James  Number"  of  the  Little  Review 
is  devoted  to  essays  by  various  hands  upon  the  works 
and  characteristics  of  the  late  novelist.  The  most  in- 
teresting essay  in  the  volume  is  one  by  Miss  Ethel 
Coburn  Mayne  reporting  the  first  appearance  and  sub- 
sequent development  of  Henry  James  as  witnessed  by 
the  writers  for  the  famous  Yellow  Book,  of  whom  Miss 
Mayne  was  not  the  least  characteristic.  What  a 
comedy  of  misunderstanding  it  all  was,  and  how  Henry 
James  must  have  smiled  about  it!  At  the  outset  the 
Yellow  Book  writers  had  the  distinct  impression  that 
Henry  James  was  one  of  themselves ;  and  they  looked 
forward  to  exploiting  the  new  worlds  which  he  brought 
into  their  ken.  But  later  on,  to  their  disappointment, 
he  fell  away,  receded  from  their  visibility,  and  became, 
as  Miss  Mayne  puts  it,  concerned  less  with  the  "world" 
than  with  the  "drawing-room."  The  fault,  however, 
was  not  with  James,  nor  was  the  change  in  him.  The 
Yellow  Book  too  readily  assumed  that  because  James 
wrote  in  it,  he  was  willing  to  be  identified  with  the 


10  Readers  and  Writers 

tendency  of  the  school;  and  they  thought  him  lacking 
in  loyalty  when  afterwards  it  appeared  that  he  was 
powerfully  hostile.  But  how  could  they  have  deceived 
themselves  into  supposing  that  a  progress  towards  the 
ghostly  could  always  keep  step  with  a  progress  towards 
the  fleshly?  The  two  were  worlds  apart,  and  if  for 
a  single  moment  they  coincided  in  an  issue  or  two  of 
the  Yellow  Book,  their  subsequent  divergence  was  only 
made  the  more  obvious.  I,  even  I,  who  was  still 
young  when  the  Yellow  Book  began  to  appear,  could 
have  told  its  editors  that  Henry  James  was  not  long 
for  their  world.  Between  the  method  employed  in, 
say,  the  Death  of  the  Lion  and  the  method  of  Henry 
Harland,  Max  Beerbohm,  Miss  Mayne  herself,  and, 
subsequently,  Mr.  D.  H.  Lawrence,  there  was,  and 
could  be,  only  an  accidental  and  momentary  sympathy. 
James  was  in  love  with  the  next  world,  or  the  next 
state  of  consciousness;  he  was  always  exploring  the 
borderland  between  the  conscious  and  the  super-con- 
scious. The  Yellow  Book  writers  were  positively 
reactionary  to  him,  for  their  borderland  was  not 
between  men  and  angels,  but  between  men  and  beasts. 
James's  "contemptuous"  word  for  Mr.  D.  H.  Law- 
rence— which  Miss  Mayne  still  groans  to  think  of — 
was  the  most  natural  and  inevitable  under  the  circum- 
stances. It  might  have  been  foreseen  from  the 
moment  Henry  James  put  his  pen  into  the  Yellow  Book. 
If  there  are  any  critics  left  who  imagine  that  the 
Yellow  Book  was  anything  but  a  literary  ad  de  sac,  I 
commend  to  them  this  present  essay  by  Miss  Mayne. 


Henry  James  II 

Under  the  disguise  of  criticism  of  Henry  James,  it  is 
a  confession. 

Henry  James's  Middle  Years  is  a  fragment  of  the 
autobiography  begun  some  years  before  the  author's 
death.  We  are  told  that  this  fragment  was  "dictated" 
by  Henry  James  and  that  it  was  never  revised  by 
himself,  both  of  which  facts  explain  a  little  of  the 
peculiarity  of  his  style.  If  the  style  of  the  earlier 
books  was  mazy,  the  style  of  Middle  Years  is  mazier. 
If  the  earlier  style  consisted  of  impressions  impassion- 
ately  conveyed,  the  present  is  more  elusive  still. 
Henry  James  was  always  difficult  to  pin  down;  in  Mid- 
dle Years  his  fluttering  among  words  never  rests  a 
sentence.  Nobody,  I  am  convinced,  who  is  not  either 
a  genuine  devotee  of  Henry  James  or  one  of  the  paper- 
audience  his  friends  cultivated  for  him,  will  succeed  in 
reading  through  this  work.  An  infinitely  leisurely  mind 
or  an  infinite  interest  in  just  Henry  James's  way  of 
looking  at  things  is  necessary  to  the  endurance  of  it. 
But  given  one  of  these,  and  in  particular  the  latter, 
and  the  reading  of  Middle  Years  becomes  an  exhilarat- 
ing exercise  in  sensing  ghosts. 

Yes,  that  is  the  phrase  to  describe  what  Henry 
James  was  always  after.  He  was  always  after  sensing 
ghosts.  His  habitat  has  been  said  to  be  the  inter-space 
between  the  real  and  the  ideal;  but  it  can  be  more 
accurately  defined  as  the  inter-space  between  the  dead 
and  the  living.  You  see  his  vision — almost  his  clair- 
voyance— actively  engaged  in  this  recovery  of  his 


12  Readers  and  Writers 

experiences  years  before  as  a  young  man  in  London. 
See  how  he  revelled  in  them,  rolling  them  off  his 
tongue  in  long  circling  phrases.  Is  it  not  obvious  that 
he  is  most  at  home  in  recollection,  in  the  world  of 
memory,  in  the  inter-world,  once  more,  of  the  dead 
and  the  living?  Observe,  too,  how  only  a  little  more 
exaggeratedly  anfractuous  and  swirling  his  style  be- 
comes— but  not,  in  any  real  sense,  different — under  the 
influence  of  memory,  than  when  professing  to  be  de- 
scribing the  present.  It  is  plain  that  memory  differs 
for  him  from  present  vision  only  in  being  a  little  more 
vivid,  a  little  more  real.  In  order  to  see  a  thing 
clearly,  he  had,  in  fact,  to  make  a  memory  of  it,  and 
the  present  tense  of  memory  is  impression.  What  I 
am  trying  to  say  is  that  Henry  James  mentalized  phe- 
nomenon; hence  that  he  saw  most  clearly  in  the  world 
of  memory  where  this  process  had  been  performed  for 
him  by  time ;  and  that  he  saw  less  clearly  in  our  actual 
world  because  the  phenomena  herein  resisted  immedi- 
ate mentalization.  The  difference  for  him  was 
between  the  pre-digested  and  the  to-be-digested;  the 
former  being  the  persons  and  events  of  memory,  and 
the  latter  being  the  events  and  persons  of  his  current 
experience. 

Henry  James  will  find  himself  very  much  at  home 
with  the  discarnate  minds  who,  it  is  presumed,  are  now 
his  companions.  Incarnation,  embodiment,  was  for 
him  a  screen  to  be  looked  through,  got  over  somehow, 
divined  into,  penetrated.  He  regarded  it  as  a  sort  of 
magic  curtain  which  concealed  at  the  same  time  that 
under  careful  observation  it  revealed  by  its  shadows 


Turgenev  13 

and  movements  the  mind  behind  it.  And  I  fancy  I 
see  him  sitting  before  the  actual  sensible  world  of 
things  and  persons  with  infinite  patience  watching  for 
a  significant  gesture  or  a  revealing  shadow.  And  such 
motions  and  shadows  he  recorded  as  impressions  which 
became  the  stuff  of  his  analysis  and  synthesis  of  the 
souls  that  originated  them.  But  if  that  was  his  atti- 
tude towards  the  material  world — and  it  is  further 
proved  by  his  occasional  excursions  into  the  completely 
ghostly — may  we  not  safely  conclude  that  in  the  world 
he  now  inhabits  his  sense  of  impressions  is  more  at 
home  still.  For  there,  as  I  take  it,  the  curtain  is 
drawn,  and  minds  and  souls  are  by  one  degree  the  more 
exposed  to  direct  vision.  With  his  marvelous  insight 
into  the  actual,  what  would  Henry  James  not  make  of 
the  mental  and  psychic  when  these  are  no  longer  con- 
cealed by  the  material?  On  the  whole,  nobody  is 
likely  to  be  happier  "dead"  than  Henry  James. 


*** 


Turgenev 

Both  in  Mr.  Conrad's  Introduction  and  Mr.  Edward 
Garnett's  critical  study  of  Turgenev  I  observe  the  atti- 
tude of  defence.  They  are  defending  rather  than  prais- 
ing Turgenev.  But  Turgenev  has  been  so  long  the  vic- 
tim of  polemics  that  it  is  about  time  some  judge  summed 
up  the  contentions  and  delivered  judgment.  Neither 
Mr.  Conrad  nor  Mr.  Garnett,  however,  is  qualified  for 
this  task  by  either  temper  or  the  power  of  judgment 


14  Readers  and  Writers 

itself.  Mr.  Conrad  is  a  great  writer,  but  he  is  not 
a  great  critic,  and  as  for  Mr.  Garnett,  he  is  not  even 
a  great  writer;  and  the  temper  of  both  is  shown  in 
their  common  tendency  to  abuse  not  only  the  plaintiff's 
attorney  but  the  jury  as  well.  But  there  is  no  use  in 
abusing  the  jury — in  other  words,  the  reading  public  of 
the  world — even  if  some  gain  may  be  got  by  polemics 
with  this  or  that  critic.  I  am  content  to  hear  Mr. 
Maurice  Baring  and  M.  Haumont  told  that  they 
are  merely  echoes  of  Russian  partisanship  and  in- 
capable of  feeling  the  fine  shades  of  "truth"  in 
Turgenev;  for  both  these  writers  are  quite  capable 
of  hitting  back.  But  when  Mr.  Conrad  satirically 
remarks  that  Turgenev  had  qualities  enough  to  ruin 
the  prospects  of  any  writer,  and  Mr.  Garnett  echoes 
him  to  the  effect  that  Turgenev  owes  his  "unpopular- 
ity" to  "an  exquisite  feeling  for  balance"  which  nowa- 
days is  "less  and  less  prized  by  modern  opinion,"  I 
feel  that  the  defence  of  Turgenev  is  exceeding  the 
limits  of  discretion.  For  it  is  not  by  any  means  the 
case  that  the  "unpopularity"  of  Turgenev  is  confined  to 
the  mob  that  has  no  feeling  for  balance  or  is  jealous 
of  his  possession  of  too  many  qualities.  Critics  as 
good  as  Mr.  Garnett  and  with  no  Russian  political 
prejudices  against  Turgenev  can  come  to  the  same  con- 
clusion as  the  innumerable  anonymous  gentlemen  of 
the  jury,  to  wit,  that  Turgenev  was  a  great  artist  on 
a  small  scale  whose  faults  were  large.  That  is  cer- 
tainly my  own  case.  While  I  agree  (or  affirm,  for  I 
am  quite  willing  to  take  the  initiative) ,  that  Turgenev's 
art  is  more  exquisite,  more  humane,  more  European 


Plotinus  15 

than  that  of  any  other  Russian  writer,  I  must  also 
maintain  that  in  timidity  of  thought,  in  sentimentality, 
in  occasional  pettiness  of  mind,  he  is  no  more  of  a 
great  writer  than,  let  us  say,  Mr.  Hall  Caine.  To 
compare  the  whole  of  him  with  the  whole  of  Dos- 
toievski  is  to  realize  in  an  instant  the  difference  between 
a  writer  great  in  parts  and  a  writer  great  even  in 
his  faults.  Turgenev  at  his  best  is  a  European,  I 
would  rather  say  a  Parisianized  Russian;  but  Dos- 
toievski,  while  wholly  Russian,  belongs  to  the  world. 
An  almost  exact  parallel  is  afforded  by  the  case  of 
Ibsen  and  Bjornson,  about  whose  respective  values 
Norway  used  to  dispute  as  now  Mr.  Garnett  would 
have  us  dispute  concerning  the  respective  values  of 
Dostoievski  and  Turgenev.  The  world  has  settled 

ith  Norway  dissenting; 
the  latter  in  favour  of 
dissenting. 


e  said  that  "no  writer 
is  less  likely  to  obtain 
ation,"  has  lately  been 
by  Mr.  Stephen  Mack- 
by  the  way) .     For  all 
lackenna's  supply,  how- 
be  read  as  much  as  he 
thinking  in  ideas  with- 


16  Readers  and  Writers 

out  images,  is  a  painful  pleasure,  comparable  to  exer- 
cises designed  and  actually  effective  to  physical  health. 
There  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  mental  power  is  in- 
creased by  abstract  thought.  Abstract  thinking  is  al- 
most a  recipe  for  the  development  of  talent.  But 
it  is  so  distasteful  to  mental  inertia  and  habit  that 
even  people  who  have  experienced  its  immense  profit 
are  disinclined  to  persist  in  it.  It  was  by  reason  of 
his  persistence  in  an  exercise  peculiarly  irksome  to 
the  Western  mind  that  Plotinus  approached  the  East 
more  nearly  in  subtlety  and  purity  of  thought  than  all 
but  a  few  Western  thinkers  before  or  after  him.  In 
reading  him  it  is  hard  to  say  that  one  is  not  reading 
a  clarified  Shankara  or  a  Vyasa  of  the  Bhishma  trea- 
tises of  the  Mahabbarata.  East  and  West  met  in  his 
mind. 

Plotinus's  aim,  like  that  of  all  thinkers  in  the  degree 
of  their  conception,  is,  in  Coleridge's  words,  "the  per- 
fect spiritualization  of  all  the  laws  of  Nature  into  laws 
of  intuition  and  intellect.  It  is  the  subsumption  of 
phenomena  in  terms  of  personality,  the  reduction  of 
Nature  to  the  mind  of  man.  Conversely  it  will  be 
seen  that  the  process  may  be  said  to  personalize 
Nature;  in  other  words,  to  assume  the  presence  in 
natural  phenomena  of  a  kind  of  personal  intelligence. 
If  this  be  animism,  I  decline  to  be  shocked  by  it  on 
that  account;  for  in  that  event  the  highest  philosophy 
and  one  of  the  lowest  forms  of  religion  coincide,  and 
there  is  no  more  to  be  said  of  it.  The  danger  of  this 
reasoning  from  mind  to  Nature  and  from  Nature  to 
mind  is  anthropomorphism.  We  tend  to  make  Nature 


The  New  Europe  17 

in  our  own  image,  or,  conversely,  a  la  Nietzsche,  to 
make  ourselves  after  the  image  of  Nature.  But  the 
greater  the  truth  the  greater  is  the  peril  of  it;  and 
thinkers  must  be  on  their  guard  to  avoid  the  dangers, 
while  nevertheless  continuing  the  method.  Plotinus 
certainly  succeeded  in  avoiding  the  anthropomorphic 
no  less  than  the  crudely  animistic  dangers  of  his 
methods;  but  at  the  cost  of  remaining  unintelligible 
to  the  majority  of  readers. 


* 
*  * 


It  should  be  possible  before  long  to  begin  to  discern 
some  of  the  outlines  of  the  new  continent  that  will 
arise  from  the  flood  of  the  present  war.  That  it  will 
be  a  new  continent  is  certain,  and  that  it  will  contain 
as  essential  features  some  of  the  aspects  of  the  Slav 
soul  is  probable.  For  what  has  been  spiritually  most 
apparent  during  the  war  has  been  the  struggle  of  the 
Slav  soul  to  find  expression  in  the  Western  medium. 
Russia,  we  may  say,  has  sought  to  Europeanize  her- 
self; or,  rather,  Russia  has  sought  to  impress  upon 
Europe  Russian  ideas;  with  this  further  resemblance 
in  her  fate  to  the  fate  of  the  pioneers  of  every  great 
new  spiritual  impulse,  that  she  has  been  crucified  in 
her  mission.  The  crucifixion  of  Slavdom,  however,  is 
the  sign  in  which  Russian  ideals — or,  let  us  say  Slav 
ideals — will  in  the  end  conquer.  They  will  not  sub- 
merge our  Western  ideals;  the  new  continent  will  be 


1 8  Readers  and  Writers 

the  old  continent  over  again;  but  they  will  profoundly 
modify  our  former  configurations,  and  compel  us  to 
draw  our  cultural  maps  afresh.  In  what  respect,  it 
may  be  asked,  will  our  conceptions  be  radically 
changed?  The  reply  is  to  be  found  confusedly  in  the 
events  of  the  Russian  Revolution;  in  the  substitution  of 
the  pan-human  for  the  national  ideal,  and  in  the  at- 
tempt, this  time  to  be  made  with  all  the  strength  at 
the  disposal  of  intelligence,  to  create  a  single  world- 
culture — a  universal  Church  of  men  of  good-sense  and 
good-will.  This  appears  to  me  to  be  the  distinguish- 
ing feature  of  the  new  continent  about  to  be  formed; 
and  we  shall  owe  it  to  the  Slavs. 


*  * 


The  Fashion  of  Anti-Puritanism 

The  anti-Puritanism  of  the  professed  anti-Puritans 
is  very  little,  if  any,  better  than  the  Puritanism  they 
oppose.  The  two  parties  divide  the  honours  of  our 
dislike  fairly  evenly  between  them.  Puritanism  is  a 
fanatical  devotion  to  a  single  aspect  of  virtue — namely, 
to  morality.  It  assumes  that  Life  is  moral  and  noth- 
ing else;  that  Power,  Wisdom,  Truth,  Beauty,  and 
Love  are  all  of  no  account  in  comparison  with  Good- 
ness; and  doing  so  it  offends  our  judgment  of  the  nature 
of  Virtue,  which  is  that  Virtue  is  wholeness  or  a  balance 
of  all  the  aspects  of  God.  Anti-Puritanism,  on  the 
other  hand,  denies  all  the  affirmations  of  Puritanism, 


The  Fashion  of  Anti-Puritanism     19 

but  without  affirming  anything  on  its  own  account.  It 
denies  that  Life  is  exclusively  moral,  but  it  does  not 
affirm  that  Life  is  anything  else;  it  destroys  the 
false  absolute  of  Puritan  propagandas  of  Malthusian- 
ism  and  tacitly  denying  that  there  is  any  absolute  what- 
soever. This  being  the  case,  our  choice  between 
Puritanism  and  anti-Puritanism  is  between  a  false 
absolute  and  no  absolute,  between  a  one-sided  truth 
and  no  truth  at  all.  We  are  bound  to  be  half-hearted 
upon  either  side,  since  the  thing  itself  is  only  half  a 
thing. 

I  am  not  likely  to  revise  my  opinions  about  virtue 
from  the  school  of  Marx  and  his  disciple  Kautsky. 
Marx  was  another  flamen,  a  priest,  that  is  to  say,  of 
one  aspect  only  of  reality — in  this  case  the  economic. 
That  the  moral  cant  of  a  particular  age  tends  to  repre- 
sent the  economic  interest  of  the  dominant  class,  is, 
of  course,  a  truism;  but  there  is  a  world  of  difference 
between  moral  cant  and  morality — and  the  latter  is  as 
uniform  throughout  the  history  as  the  former  is  vari- 
able. Moreover,  it  is  not  by  any  means  always  the 
case  that  the  interests  of  the  dominant  class  of  capi- 
talism are  identical  with  Puritanism.  The  interests 
of  capitalism  today  are  decidedly  with  anti-Puritanism, 
in  so  far  as  the  effects  of  anti-Puritanism  are  to  break 
up  family  life,  to  restrict  births  and  to  cultivate  eu- 
genics. What  could  suit  capitalism  better  than  to 
atomize  the  last  surviving  natural  grouping  of  indi- 
viduals and  to  breed  for  the  servile  State?  The 
anti-Puritan  propagandas  of  Malthusianism  and  eu- 


2O  Readers  and  Writers 

genics  are  not  carried  on,  too,  by  Marxians,  but  by  the 
wealthy  classes.  Because  he  is  a  shopkeeper,  the 
Anglo-Saxon  is  today  an  anti-Puritan  in  these  matters. 


*** 


Popular  Philosophy 

The  difficulty  of  popular  philosophical  discussion  is 
not  insuperable.  It  is  all  a  matter  of  style.  Mr.  Ber- 
trand  Russell,  for  example,  manages  by  means  of  an 
excellent  style  to  make  philosophy  as  easy  to  under- 
stand and  as  entrancing  to  follow  as  certain  writers 
have  made  the  equally  difficult  subject  of  economics. 
It  is,  in  fact,  the  business  of  professional  thinkers  to 
popularize  their  subject  and  to  procure  for  their  Muse 
as  many  devotees  as  possible.  In  the  case  of  Mr. 
Bertrand  Russell,  his  admirable  style  has  been  put  into 
the  service  of  the  most  abominable  philosophy  ever 
formulated.  He  is  an  accidentalist  of  the  most 
thorough-going  kind  who  denies  that  life  has  any 
meaning  or  purpose.  Life  appeared,  he  says,  by 
chance,  and  will  disappear,  probably  for  good,  with  the 
cooling  of  the  sun;  and  he  sings  like  a  doomed  cricket 
on  a  dissolving  iceberg.  But  it  is  all  the  more  strange 
in  my  judgment  that  a  man  who  thinks  thus  can  write 
as  Mr.  Russell  writes.  There  is  a  contradiction  some- 
where between  the  simple  richness  of  his  style  and  the 
Spartan  poverty  of  his  ideas.  He  thinks  glacially,  but 
his  style  is  warm.  I  suspect  that  if  he  were  psycho- 
analysed Mr.  Bertrand  Russell  would  turn  out  to  be 


Was  Carlyle  Prussian?  21 

a  walking  contradiction.  In  a  word,  I  don't  believe 
he  believes  a  word  he  says!  That  tone,  that  style, 
them  there  gestures — they  betray  the  stage-player  of 
the  spirit. 

A  philosophy  written  in  a  popular  style  is  not,  of 
course,  the  same  thing  as  a  popular  philosophy. 
"From  a  popular  philosophy  and  a  philosophical  pop- 
ulace, good  sense  deliver  us,"  said  Coleridge,  meaning 
to  say  that  a  philosophy  whose  substance  and  not  whose 
expression  only  has  been  adapted  to  the  populace  is  in 
all  probability  false  and  is  certainly  superficial.  For 
in  his  Lay  Sermons,  published  a  hundred  years  ago, 
Coleridge  supplemented  the  foregoing  remark  by  de- 
ploring the  "long  and  ominous  eclipse  of  philosophy, 
the  usurpation  of  that  venerable  name  by  physical  and 
psychological  empiricism,  and  the  non-existence  of  a 
learned  and  philosophical  public"  Between  a  philo- 
sophic public  and  a  philosophic  populace  there  is  the 
same  distinction  as  between  the  "public"  that  reads, 
let  us  say,  Sedlak,  and  the  "populace"  that  reads,  let 
us  say,  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells.  Mr.  Wells  is  a  popular 
philosopher;  but  that  is  manifestly  not  the  same  thing 
as  a  writer  who  is  trying  to  make  philosophy  popular. 


* 

*  * 


Was  Carlyle  Prussian? 

In  the  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  Mr.  Herbert 
Stewart  makes  a  chivalrous  attempt  to  deliver  Carlyle 
from  the  charge  recently  brought  home  to  him  of  hav- 


22  Readers  and  Writers 

ing  been  a  Prussian.  Militarist  Prussianism,  he  says, 
rests  upon  a  postulate  which  would  have  filled  Carlyle 
with  horror,  the  postulate,  namely,  that  an  autocracy 
must  be  organized  for  war.  I  am  not  satisfied,  how- 
ever, that  Carlyle  would  have  been  filled  with  any- 
thing but  admiration.  It  is  true  that  he  did  not  adopt 
the  Prussian  error  of  identifying  Might  with  Right. 
"Is  Arithmetic,"  he  asked,  "a  thing  more  fixed  by  the 
Eternal  than  the  laws  of  justice  are?"  Could  Justice 
or  Right,  therefore,  be  allowed  to  vary  with  the 
amount  of  Might  at  its  disposal — a  deduction  inevit- 
able from  the  Prussian  hypothesis?  On  the  other 
hand,  Carlyle  cannot  be  said  to  have  been  equally  free 
from  the  more  subtle  error  of  Prussianism,  the  as- 
sumption that  Might  can  be  accumulated  only  by  Right 
means.  Might,  he  said  in  effect,  being  an  attribute 
of  God,  can  be  obtained  by  man  only  as  a  result  of  some 
virtue.  Hence  its  possession  presumes  the  possession 
of  a  proportionate  virtue,  and  a  man  of  Might  is  to 
that  extent  a  man  of  Right  also.  This  subtlety  led 
Carlyle  into  some  strange  company  for  the  moral 
fanatic  he  was.  It  led  him  to  glorify  Frederick  the 
Great  and  to  condone  Frederick's  crime  against  Silesia. 
It  led  him  to  despise  France  and  to  defend  West  In- 
dian slavery.  Mr.  Stewart  must  make  his  choice 
between  Carlyle  as  a  confused  ethical  philosopher  and 
Carlyle  as  a  Prussian.  If  he  was  not  the  latter,  he  was 
the  former. 


*  * 


Is  Nietzsche  for  Germany?         23 
Is  Nietzsche  for  Germany? 

Nietzsche  we  are  told,  is  being  read  as  never  before 
in  Germany.  It  is  certain  that  Nietzsche  was  taken, 
if  taken  at  all,  in  the  wrong  sense  in  Germany  before 
the  war.  The  Germans  did  with  him  precisely  what 
the  mob  everywhere  does  with  the  satirist;  they  swal- 
lowed his  praise  and  ignored  his  warnings.  He  is 
still,  however,  more  of  a  danger  than  a  saviour  to 
post-war  Germany,  if  only  for  the  reason  that  his  vo- 
cabulary is  for  the  most  part  militarist.  Culture  is 
usually  presented  by  Nietzsche  in  the  term  of  combat, 
and  the  still  small  voice  of  perfection  is  only  heard  in 
the  silences  of  his  martial  sentences.  Now  that  Ger- 
many has  begun  to  re-read  Nietzsche,  will  it  read  him 
any  more  intelligently  than  before?  Is  not  a  critique 
of  Nietzsche  a  necessary  condition  of  safely  reading 
him — in  Germany?  There  are,  undoubtedly,  authors 
who  are  most  dangerous  to  the  nation  in  which  they 
appear.  Rousseau  was  particularly  dangerous  to 
France.  Whitman  is  inimical  to  American  culture. 
Dr.  Johnson  has  been  a  blight  upon  English  thought. 
And  Nietzsche,  it  may  well  be,  is  only  a  blessing  out- 
side of  Germany.  Art  and  thought,  it  is  commonly 
said,  are  beyond  nationality  and  beyond  race;  and  from 
this  it  follows  that  it  is  only  a  happy  accident  when 
a  great  writer  or  thinker  is  peculiarly  suited  to  the 
nation  in  which  he  happens  to  be  born.  He  is  ad- 
dressed to  the  world — why  should  his  message  be 
specially  adapted  to  the  language  and  people  of  his 


24  Readers  and  Writers 

parentage?  A  nation  runs  risks  in  accepting  as  its  own 
the  doctrines  of  the  great  men  who  chance  to  appear 
among  it.  Equally,  a  nation  runs  the  risk  of  missing 
its  real  chosen  unless  it  examines  all  the  great  men  of 
the  world.  Chauvinism,  either  by  choice  or  by  ex- 
clusion, is  always  dangerous.  We  must  take  the  good 
where  we  find  it. 

*   * 

Nietzsche  in  Fragments 

The  English  mind  is  easily  "put  off"  a  subject,  and 
particularly  easily  off  a  subject  as  uncongenial  as 
Nietzsche;  and  it  has  been  known  to  remain  in  this 
state  for  a  century  or  more.  Several  of  our  own 
greatest  thinkers  and  writers  have  had  to  wait  a  long 
period  for  their  readers,  and  by  the  time  that  the 
English  mind  has  recovered  itself,  they  are  often  quite 
dead.  It  is  likely  to  be  the  same  with  Nietzsche. 
Having  the  plausible  excuse  for  being  "off"  Nietzsche 
which  the  war  provided,  the  English  intellectual  classes 
— note  that  I  do  not  say  the  intellectual  English 
classes,  for  there  are  none — will  continue  to  neglect 
Nietzsche  until  he  has  been  superseded,  as  I  believe  he 
will  be  before  very  long.  Psycho-analysis  has  taken 
a  good  deal  of  Nietzsche  in  its  stride,  and  it  is  quite 
possible  that  the  re-reading  of  Indian  philosophy  in 
the  light  of  psycho-analysis  will  gather  most  of  the 
remainder. 

Nevertheless,  the  remaining  fragments  will  be  worth 
preserving,  since  indubitably  they  will  be  the  fragments 


Nietzsche  in  Fragments  25 

of  a  giant  of  thought.  As  Heraclitus  is  represented 
by  a  small  collection  of  aphorisms,  each  so  concen- 
trated that  one  would  serve  for  an  ordinary  man's 
equipment  for  intellectual  life,  the  Nietzsche  of  the 
future  may  be  contained  in  a  very  small  volume,  chiefly 
of  aphorisms.  He  aimed,  he  said,  at  saying  in  a  sen- 
tence what  other  writers  say  in  a  book,  and  he  charac- 
teristically added  that  he  aimed  at  saying  in  a  sentence 
what  other  writers  did  not  say  in  a  book.  And  he  very 
often  succeeded.  These  successes  are  his  real  contri- 
bution to  his  own  immortality,  and  they  will,  I  think, 
ensure  it.  I  should  advise  Dr.  Oscar  Levy  to  prepare 
such  a  volume  without  delay.  It  may  be  the  case  that 
Nietzsche  will  be  read  in  his  entirety  again,  though  I 
doubt  it;  but,  in  any  event,  such  a  volume  as  I  have  in 
mind  would  serve  to  either  reintroduce  him  or  hand- 
somely to  bury  the  mortal  part  of  him. 

I  cannot  believe  that  Nietzsche  is  about  to  be  read, 
as  never  before,  in  Germany.  Dr.  Levy  has  assured 
us,  on  the  report  of  a  Berlin  bookseller,  that  this  was 
indicated  in  the  sales  of  Nietzsche  in  Germany;  but 
the  wish  was  father  to  the  deduction  from  the  very 
small  fact.  Nietzsche  was,  before  anything  else,  a 
great  culture-hero;  as  a  critic  of  art  he  has  been  sur- 
passed by  no  man.  But  is  there  any  appeal  in  culture 
to  a  Germany  situated  as  Germany  is  today?  I  am 
here  only  a  literary  causeur.  With  the  dinosaurs  and 
other  monsters  of  international  politics  I  cannot  be 
supposed  to  be  on  familiar  terms.  My  opinion,  never- 
theless, based  upon  my  own  material,  is  that  Germany 


26  Readers  and  Writers 

is  most  unlikely  to  resume  the  pursuit  of  culture  where 
she  interrupted  it  after  1870,  or,  indeed,  to  pursue 
culture  at  all.  And  the  reason  for  my  opinion  is  that 
Russia  is  too  close  at  hand,  too  accessible,  and,  above 
all,  too  tempting  to  German  cupidity.  Think  what  the 
proximity  to  Germany — to  a  Germany  headed  off  from 
the  Western  world — of  a  commercially  succulent 
country  like  Russia  really  means.  Germans  are  hu- 
man, even  if  they  are  not  sub-human,  and  the  tempta- 
tion of  an  El  Dorado  at  their  doors  will  prove  to  be 
more  seductive  than  the  cry  from  the  muezzin  to  come 
to  culture,  come  to  culture.  Nietzsche  on  the  one  side 
calling  them  to  spiritual  conquests  will  be  met  by  the 
big  bagmen  calling  them,  on  the  other  side,  to  com- 
mercial conquests.  Who  can  doubt  which  appeal  will 
be  the  stronger?  Germany  refused  to  attend  to 
Nietzsche  after  1870,  when  he  spoke  to  them  as  one 
alive;  they  are  less  likely  to  listen  to  a  voice  from  the 
dead  after  1918.  On  second  thoughts,  I  should  advise 
Dr.  Oscar  Levy  to  publish  his  volume  in  Germany  first. 
For  there  he  would  show  by  one  satiric  touch  that  no 
country  needed  it  so  much. 


* 
*   * 


The  End  of  Fiction 

Fiction  nowadays,  we  are  told,  is  not  what  it  used 
to  be.  We  are  told  that  it  is  the  modern  university. 
It  is  certainly  a  very  obliging  medium.  But  on  this 


The  Criteria  of  Culture  27 

very  account  it  is  as  delusive  as  it  is  obliging.  It  re- 
ceives impressions  easily,  readily  adapts  itself  to  every 
kind  of  material,  and  assumes  at  the  word  of  command 
any  and  every  mood.  But  precisely  because  it  does 
these  things,  the  effects  it  produces  are  transient. 
Lightly  come,  lightly  go;  and  if,  as  has  been  said,  fic- 
tion is  the  modern  reader's  university,  it  is  a  school  in 
which  he  learns  everything  and  forgets  everything. 
Modern  as  I  am,  and  hopeful  as  I  am  of  modernity, 
I  cannot  think  that  the  predominance  of  fiction,  even 
of  such  fiction  as  is  written  today,  is  a  good  sign;  and 
when  we  see  that  it  leads  nowhere,  that  the  people  who 
read  much  of  it  never  read  anything  else,  and  that  it 
is  an  intellectual  cul-de-sac,  our  alarm  at  the  phenom- 
enon is  the  greater.  What  kind  of  minds  do  we  ex- 
pect to  develop  on  a  diet  of  forty  parts  fiction  to  two 
of  all  other  forms  of  literature?  Assuming  the  free 
libraries  to  be  the  continuation  schools  of  the  public, 
what  is  their  value  if  the  only  lessons  taken  in  them 
are  the  lessons  of  fiction?  I  will  not  dwell  on  the 
obvious  discouragement  the  figures  are  to  every  serious 
writer,  for  the  effect  on  the  readers  must  be  worse. 


* 
*   * 


The  Criteria  of  Culture 

The  suppression  of  the  display  of  feeling,  or,  better, 
the  control  of  the  display  of  feeling,  is  the  first  condi- 
tion of  thought,  and  only  those  who  have  aimed  at 


28  Readers  and  Writers 

writing  with  studied  simplicity,  studied  lucidity,  and 
studied  detachment  realize  the  amount  of  feeling  that 
has  to  be  trained  to  run  quietly  in  harness.  The 
modern  failure  (as  compared  with  the  success  of  the 
Greeks)  to  recognize  feeling  as  an  essential  element  of 
lucidity  and  the  rest  of  the  virtues  of  literary  form  is 
due  to  an  excess  of  fiction.  Just  because  fiction  ex- 
presses everything  it  really  impresses  nothing.  Its 
feeling  evaporates  as  fast  as  it  exudes.  The  sensation, 
nevertheless,  is  pleasant,  for  the  reader  appears  to  be 
witnessing  genuine  feeling  genuinely  expressing  itself; 
and  he  fails  to  remember  that  what  is  true  of  a  person 
is  likely  to  be  true  of  a  book,  that  the  more  apparent, 
obvious,  and  demonstrated  the  feelings,  the  more 
superficial,  unreal,  and  transient  they  probably  are. 
As  a  matter  of  cold-blooded  fact,  it  has  been  clearly 
shown  during  the  course  of  the  war  that  precisely  our 
most  "passionate"  novelists  have  been  our  least 
patriotic  citizens.  I  name  no  names,  since  they  are 
known  to  everybody. 

Culture  I  define  as  being,  amongst  other  things,  a 
capacity  for  subtle  discrimination  of  words  and  ideas. 
Epictetus  made  the  discrimination  of  words  the  foun- 
dation of  moral  training,  and  it  is  true  enough  that 
every  stage  of  moral  progress  is  indicated  by  the  de- 
gree of  our  perception  of  the  meaning  of  words.  Tell 
me  what  words  have  a  particular  interest  for  you,  and 
I  will  tell  you  what  class  of  the  world-school  you  are 
in.  Tell  me  what  certain  words  mean  for  you  and  I 
will  tell  you  what  you  mean  for  the  world  of  thought. 


The  Criteria  of  Culture  29 

One  of  the  most  subtle  words,  and  one  of  the  key- 
words of  culture,  is  simplicity.  Can  you  discriminate 
between  natural  simplicity  and  studied  simplicity,  be- 
tween Nature  and  Art?  In  appearance  they  are 
indistinguishable,  but  in  reality  they  are  aeons  apart; 
and  whoever  has  learned  to  distinguish  between  them 
is  entitled  to  regard  himself  as  on  the  way  to  culture. 
Originality  is  another  key-word,  and  its  subtlety  may 
be  suggested  by  a  paradox  which  was  a  common-place 
among  the  Greeks;  namely,  that  the  most  original 
minds  strive  to  conceal  their  originality,  and  that  the 
master-minds  succeed.  Contrast  this  counsel  of  per- 
fect originality  with  the  counsels  given  in  our  own  day, 
in  which  the  aim  of  originality  is  directed  to  appearing 
original — you  will  be  brought,  thereby,  face  to  face 
with  still  another  key-idea  of  Culture,  the  relation  of 
Appearance  to  Reality.  All  these  exercises  in  culture 
are  elementary,  however,  in  comparison  with  the  mas- 
ter-problem of  disinterestedness.  No  word  in  the 
English  language  is  more  difficult  to  define  or  better 
worth  attempting  to  define.  Somewhere  or  other  in  its 
capacious  folds  it  contains  all  the  ideas  of  ethics,  and 
even,  I  should  say,  of  religion.  The  Bhagavad  Gita 
(to  name  only  one  classic)  can  be  summed  up  in  the 
word.  Duty  is  only  a  pale  equivalent  of  it.  I  venture 
to  say  that  whoever  has  understood  the  meaning  of 
"disinterestedness"  is  not  far  off  understanding  the 
goal  of  human  culture. 

*** 


30  Readers  and  Writers 

The  Fate  of  Sculpture 

The  art-critic  of  The  Times  having  remarked  that 
"the  public  hardly  looks  at  the  sculpture  in  the  Acad- 
emy, or  outside  it,"  Mr.  John  Tweed,  an  eminent 
sculptor  himself,  has  now  uttered  a  public  lamentation 
in  agreement  with  him.  Sculpture  today,  he  says,  is 
an  art  without  an  audience;  and  he  quotes  a  Belgian 
artist  who  told  him  what  heroes  our  contemporary 
sculptors  in  this  country  must  be  to  continue  their  work 
in  the  face  of  a  unanimous  neglect.  It  is  not  certain, 
however,  that  the  sculptors  of  today  do  not  thoroughly 
well  deserve  the  fate  to  which  they  now  find  them- 
selves condemned.  In  the  economy  of  the  arts,  or,  if 
this  phrase  be  preferred,  in  the  strategy  of  the  aesthet- 
ics, nothing  is  more  necessary  from  time  to  time  in 
each  of  the  arts  than  an  iconoclast — by  which  I  indi- 
cate not  a  destroyer  simply,  but  a  creator  of  new  forms. 
Such  a  pioneer  is  of  necessity  a  little  rude  to  his  im- 
mediate predecessors  and  to  such  of  his  contemporaries 
as  are  sheep.  But  in  the  end,  nevertheless,  if  they  will 
only  accept  and  recognize  him,  he  will  revive  their 
art  for  them.  But  in  the  case  of  sculpture  the  two 
such  iconoclasts  as  have  recently  appeared — Mr.  Ep- 
stein and  the  late  Gaudier-Brzeska — were  instantly  set 
upon,  not  by  the  public,  but  by  their  contemporaries, 
and  walled  within  a  neglect  far  more  complete  than  the 
neglect  sculpture  in  general  has  received.  Just  when 
it  appeared  that  they  might  be  about  to  reawaken 
public  interest  in  carven  forms,  the  rest  of  the  sculp- 


The  Too  Clever  31 

tors  hurried  to  silence  them,  with  the  consequence  that 
at  this  moment  there  is  literally  nobody  engaged  in 
sculpture  in  whom  the  intelligent  public  takes  the 
smallest  interest.  As  sculptors  have  treated  sculpture, 
so  the  public  now  treats  sculptors.  It  is  a  pretty 
piece  of  karma. 


*   * 


The  Too  Clever 

Neglect  means  nothing  very  much;  success  is  a 
matter  of  time  for  everything  that  is  really  classic. 
On  the  other  hand,  deliberately  to  incur  neglect  by 
writing  for  the  few  involves  the  further  risk  of  more 
and  more  deserving  it.  Whoever  makes  a  boast  of 
writing  for  a  coterie  sooner  or  later  finds  himself 
writing  for  a  coterie  of  a  coterie,  and  at  last  for  him- 
self alone.  It  cannot  be  otherwise.  As  the  progress 
of  the  classic  is  from  the  one  to  the  many,  the  progress 
of  the  romantic  is  from  the  many  to  the  one;  and  the 
more  sincerely  the  latter  is  a  romantic,  the  sooner  he 
arrives  at  his  journey's  end.  The  involution  of  aim 
thus  brought  about  is  obvious  already  in  the  succession 
of  works  of  the  chief  writers  of  the  Little  Review. 
They  grow  cleverer  and  cleverer,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  more  and  more  unintelligible.  I  am  staggered 
by  the  cleverness  of  such  a  writer  as  Mr.  Wyndham 
Lewis,  and  a  little  more  so  at  the  cleverness  of  Mr. 
James  Joyce.  But  in  the  case  of  both  of  them,  I  find 
myself  growing  more  and  more  mystified,  bewildered, 


32  Readers  and  Writers 

and  repelled.  Is  it,  I  ask,  that  they  do  not  write  for 
readers  like  me?  Then  their  circle  must  be  contract- 
ing, for  I  am  one  of  many  who  used  to  read  them  with 
pleasure.  And  who  are  they  gaining  while  losing  us? 
Are  their  new  readers  more  intensive  if  fewer,  and 
better  worth  while  for  their  quality  than  we  were  for 
our  numbers?  But  I  decline  to  allow  the  favourable 
answers.  The  fact  is  that  the  writers  of  the  Little 
Review  are  getting  too  clever  even  for  coterie,  and 
will  soon  be  read  only  by  each  other,  or  themselves. 

A  characteristic  example  is  to  be  found  in  the  open- 
ing chapter  of  Mr.  James  Joyce's  new  novel,  Ulysses. 
This  is  how  it  begins: — 

Stately,  plump  Buck  Milligan  came  from  the  stairway,  bear- 
ing a  bowl  of  lather  on  which  a  mirror  and  a  razor  lay  crossed. 
A  yellow  dressing-gown,  ungirdled,  was  sustained  gently  behind 
him  on  the  mild  morning  air.  He  held  the  bowl  aloft  and  in- 
toned. .  .  . 

Now  it  is  clear  that  such  a  passage  has  not  been 
written  without  a  great  deal  of  thought,  and  if  thought 
were  art,  it  might  be  called  an  artistic  passage.  But 
thought  is  not  only  not  art,  but  the  aim  of  art  is  to 
conceal  thought.  In  its  perfection  art  is  indistinguish- 
able from  nature.  The  auspicious  thoughtfulness  of 
the  passage  I  have  quoted  is,  therefore,  an  objection 
to  it;  and  the  more  so  since  it  provokes  an  inspection 
it  is  unable  to  sustain.  Challenged  to  "think"  about 
what  the  writer  is  saying,  the  reader  at  once  discovers 
that  the  passage  will  not  bear  thinking  about.  He 
asks,  for  instance,  whence  Buck  Milligan  came  from 


Homage  to  Propertius  33 

the  staircase;  how  he  managed  to  balance  a  crossed 
mirror  and  razor  on  a  bowl's  edge — and,  particularly, 
while  bearing  them  aloft;  and  what  mild  air  it  was  that 
sustained  the  tails  of  a  man's  dressing-gown.  To 
these  questions  deliberately  provoked  by  the  ostenta- 
tious care  of  the  writer  there  is  either  no  answer  or 
none  forthcoming  without  more  thought  than  the  de- 
tail is  worth.  The  passage,  in  short,  suffers  from 
being  aimed  at  a  diminishing  coterie;  and  it  succeeds 
in  satisfying,  I  imagine,  only  the  writer  of  it  who  is 
alone  in  all  its  secrets.  Mr.  James  Joyce  had  once 
the  makings  of  a  great  writer — not  a  popular  writer, 
but  a  classic  writer.  To  become  what  he  was  he 
needed  to  be  opened  out,  to  be  simplified,  to  conceal 
his  cleverness,  to  write  more  and  more  for  the  world. 
But  first  in  the  Egoist  and  now  in  the  Little  Review  he 
has  been  directed  to  cultivate  his  faults,  his  limitations, 
his  swaddling  clothes  of  genius,  with  the  result  that 
he  is  in  imminent  danger  of  brilliant  provincialism. 


*   * 


Homage  to  Propertius 

Mr.  Ezra  Pound's  Homage  to  Propertius  has  drawn 
an  American  Professor  of  Latin  into  the  pages  of  the 
American  magazine  Poetry.  Professor  Hales  is  in- 
dignant at  the  attempt  of  Mr.  Pound  to  make  Pro- 
pertius intelligible  as  well  as  merely  accessible  to  the 
modern  English  reader,  and  in  the  name  of  Scholar- 
ship, he  begs  Mr.  Pound  to  "lay  aside  the  mask  of 


34  Readers  and  Writers 

erudition"  and  to  confess  himself  nothing  better  than 
a  poet.  With  some  of  Professor  Hales's  literal  criti- 
cisms it  is  impossible  not  to  agree.  Speaking  in  the 
name  of  the  schools,  he  is  frequently  correct.  But  in 
the  name  of  the  humanities  of  life,  of  art,  of  litera- 
ture, what  in  the  world  does  it  matter  that  Mr.  Pound 
has  spelled  Punic  with  a  capital  when  he  meant  a  small 
letter,  or  that  he  has  forgotten  the  existence  of  the 
Marcian  aqueduct?  Mr.  Pound  did  not  set  out  with 
the  intention  of  making  a  literal  translation  of  Pro- 
pertius.  He  set  out  with  the  intention  of  creating  in 
English  verse  a  verse  reincarnation,  as  it  were,  of  Pro- 
pertius,  a  "homage"  to  Propertius  that  should  take  the 
form  of  rendering  him  a  contemporary  of  our  own. 
And,  secondly,  all  criticism  based  on  the  text  of  Pro- 
pertius is  invalid  unless  it  is  accompanied  by  a  percep- 
tion of  the  psychological  quality  of  Propertius  as  he 
lived.  But  Professor  Hales,  it  is  clear,  has  no  sense 
for  this  higher  kind  of  criticism,  for  he  complains  that 
there  is  "no  hint"  in  Propertius's  text  of  "certain  de- 
cadent meanings"  which  Mr.  Pound  attributes  to  him. 
Is  there  not,  indeed?  Accepting  decadence  in  its 
modern  American  meaning,  Propertius  can  only  be  said 
to  be  full  of  it.  No  literary  critic,  accustomed  to 
reading  through  and  between  an  author's  lines,  whether 
they  be  Latin,  Greek,  or  English,  can  doubt  the  evi- 
dence of  his  trained  senses  that  the  mind  behind  the 
text  of  Propertius  was  a  mind  which  the  Latin  Profes- 
sor of  the  Chicago  University  would  call  decadent,  if 
only  it  expressed  itself  in  English.  The  facts  that 
Propertius  was  a  poet  contemporary  with  Ovid,  that 


Homage  to  Propertius  35 

he  wrote  of  the  life  of  the  luxurious  Roman  Empire, 
as  one  who  habitually  lived  it,  that  he  wrote  of  love 
and  of  his  own  adventures,  are  quite  sufficient  to  prove 
that  he  was  a  child  of  his  age;  and  if  his  age  was,  as  it 
undoubtedly  was,  decadent,  in  a  professorial  sense, 
Propertius,  we  may  be  sure,  shared  its  decadence,  I 
am  not  saying,  it  will  be  observed,  nor,  I  think,  would 
Mr.  Pound  say,  that  to  have  shared  in  decadence  and 
to  be  sympathetic  to  it  are  the  same  thing  as  to  be  de- 
cadent in  oneself.  What,  in  fact,  distinguishes  Pro- 
pertius is  his  aesthetic  reaction  against  decadence, 
against  the  very  decadence  in  which  he  had  been 
brought  up,  and  with  which  he  had  sympathized.  But 
this  is  not  to  admit  that  "no  hint  of  certain  decadent 
meanings"  is  to  be  found  in  him.  On  the  contrary,  he 
could  not  very  well  have  become  the  aesthetic  reaction 
against  decadence  without  importing  into  his  verse 
more  than  a  hint  of  certain  decadent  meanings.  In 
effect,  Propertius  is  the  compendium  of  the  Roman 
Empire  at  its  turning  point  in  the  best  minds.  Long 
before  history  with  its  slow  sequence  of  events  proved 
to  the  gross  senses  of  mankind  that  Empire  was  a 
moral  and  aesthetic  blunder,  Propertius  discovered  the 
fact  for  himself  and  recorded  his  judgment  in  the 
aesthetic  form  of  his  exquisite  verse.  But  he  must  have 
passed  through  decadence  in  order  to  have  arrived 
at  his  final  judgment;  and,  indeed,  as  I  have  said,  his 
verse  bears  witness  of  it.  Professor  Hales  has  been 
misled  by  Propertius's  reflections,  by  his  habit  of  sub- 
limating his  experiences,  by  nis  criticism  of  decadence. 
But  that  reflection  was  only  an  accompaniment,  or, 


36  Readers  and  Writers 

rather,  sequel  of  Propertius's  mode  of  life;  it  did  not, 
any  more  than  such  reflection  does  today,  make  im- 
possible or  even  improbable  a  mode  of  life  in  violent 
contrast  with  the  reflection  made  upon  it. 


*  * 


Mr.  Pound  and  Mr.  Wyndham  Lewis  in 
Public 

Mr.  Ezra  Pound  has  for  some  months  been  the 
"foreign"  or  exile  editor  of  the  Little  Review,  and  I 
gather  from  the  nature  of  the  contributions  that  he 
has  practically  commandeered  most  of  the  space.  A 
series  of  letters  and  some  stories  by  Mr.  Wyndham 
Lewis;  letters,  stories  and  verse,  by  Mr.  Pound;  ditto, 
ditto,  ditto,  by  other — shall  I  say  London? — writers — 
are  evidence  that  Mr.  Pound's  office  is  no  sinecure. 
He  delivers  the  goods.  The  aim  of  the  Little  Review, 
as  defined  without  the  least  attempt  at  camouflage  by 
the  editress  (that  is  to  say,  the  real  American  director 
of  the  venture),  is  to  publish  articles,  stories,  verses, 
and  drawings  of  pure  art — whatever  that  may  be.  It 
is  not  demanded  of  them  that  they  shall  be  true — or 
false;  that  they  shall  have  a  meaning — single  or 
double;  that  they  shall  be  concerned  with  life — or 
fancy.  Nothing,  in  fact,  is  asked  of  them  but  that 
they  shall  be  art,  just  art.  Less  explicitly,  but  to  the 
same  effect,  both  Mr.  Pound  and  Mr.  Wyndham  Lewis 
subscribe  to  the  same  formula.  They,  too,  are  after 
art,  nothing  but  art.  But  in  other  respects  they  de- 


Mr.  Pound  and  Mr.  Lewis         37 

fine  themselves  more  clearly.  From  Mr.  Wyndham 
Lewis,  for  instance,  I  gather  that  the  aim  of  the  Little 
Review  artists  is  to  differentiate  themselves  from  the 
mob.  Art  would  seem  to  consist,  indeed,  in  this  dif- 
ferentiation or  self-separation.  Whatever  puts  a  gulf 
between  yourself  and  the  herd,  and  thus  "distin- 
guishes" you,  is  and  must  be  art,  because  of  this  very 
effect.  And  Mr.  Pound  carries  on  the  doctrine  a  stage 
by  insisting  that  the  only  thing  that  matters  about  the 
mob  is  to  deliver  individuals  from  it.  Art,  in  short, 
is  the  discovery,  maintenance,  and  culture  of  indi- 
viduals. 

We  have  all  heard  of  this  doctrine ;  and  there  is  no 
doubt  that  it  is  very  seductive.  But  to  whom?  It 
has  been  remarked  before  that  the  appeal  of  Nietzsche 
has  often  been  to  the  last  persons  in  the  world  you 
would  have  thought  capable  of  responding  to  him;  or, 
let  us  say,  to  the  last  persons  that  ought  to  respond  to 
him — weak-willed,  moral  imbeciles,  with  not  enough 
intelligence  to  be  even  efficient  slaves.  These,  as 
Nietzsche  discovered,  were  only  too  often  the  sort 
of  person  that  was  attracted  by  his  muscular  doctrine 
of  the  Will  to  Power.  It  is  the  case  likewise  with  the 
doctrine  of  individuality.  Among  its  disciples  there 
are,  of  course,  the  few  who  understand  it;  but  the  ma- 
jority of  them  are  precisely  the  persons  who  prove 
by  their  devotion  their  personal  need  of  it.  Individu- 
ality is  for  these  as  much  a  cult  as  health  is  a  cult 
among  the  sick;  and  it  is  to  be  observed  that  they  also 
have  to  take  a  good  deal  of  care  of  themselves.  They 
must  never  associate  with  the  mob,  they  must  be  care- 


38  Readers  and  Writers 

ful  what  they  eat  in  the  way  of  aesthetics;  they  must 
pick  and  choose  among  people,  places  and  things  with 
all  the  delicacy  of  an  egg-shell  among  potsherds.  Above 
all,  they  must  keep  their  art  pure.  Neither  Mr.  Wynd- 
ham  Lewis  nor  Mr.  Ezra  Pound  belongs  to  this  class 
of  aesthetic  valetudinarians.  Both  are  robust  persons 
with  excellent  digestions,  and  with  a  great  deal  of  sub- 
stantial common  sense.  Nevertheless,  both  of  them, 
to  my  mind,  pose  as  invalids,  and  simulate  all  the 
whimperings  and  fastidiousness  of  the  malades  imagln- 
aires.  Read  Mr.  Lewis's  letters,  for  example,  in  the 
issues  of  the  Little  Review  here  under  notice.  The 
writer  is  obviously  a  very  clever  man,  with  a  good  ex- 
perience and  judgment  of  life,  and  possessed  of  a 
powerful  style.  But  he  has  chosen  to  exhibit  himself 
as  a  clever  gymnast  of  words,  with  innumerable  finnick- 
ing  fancies  against  this  or  that  lest  he  should  be  con- 
fused with  the  "mob."  And  Mr.  Pound  is  in  much 
the  same  state.  What  is  the  need  of  it  in  their  case, 
I  ask?  Unlike  most  of  the  other  writers,  neither  Mr. 
Lewis  nor  Mr.  Pound  has  any  need  to  "cultivate"  an 
individuality,  or  to  surround  it  with  walls  and  moats 
of  poses.  Neither  has  any  need  whatever  to  appear 
clever  in  order  to  be  clever.  On  the  contrary,  both 
of  them  have  need  to  do  exactly  the  reverse — namely, 
to  cut  their  too  exuberant  individuality  down  to  the 
quick,  and  to  reveal  their  cleverness  by  concealing  it. 
Simplicity,  as  Oscar  Wilde  said — he,  of  course,  only 
said  it,  he  never  really  thought  it — is  the  last  refuge 
of  complexity.  And  I  put  it  to  Mr.  Lewis  and  Mr. 
Pound  that  with  just  a  little  more  individuality,  and 


Mr.  Pound  and  Mr.  Lewis         39 

with  just  a  little  more  cleverness,  their  ambition  will 
be  to  be  indistinguishable  from  the  mob,  either  by  their 
individuality  or  their  cleverness.  They  will  not  suc- 
ceed in  it.  Individuality  and  cleverness,  like  murder, 
will  out.  The  aim,  however,  of  the  wise  possessor  of 
either,  is  to  conceal  it  in  subtler  and  subtler  forms  of 
common  sense  and  simplicity. 

Among  the  clever  poses  of  this  type  of  "stage  player 
of  the  spirit,"  as  Nietzsche  called  them,  is  the  pose  of 
the  enfant  terrible.  They  are  mightily  concerned  to 
shock  the  bourgeoisie,  and  are  never  so  happy  as  when 
they  have  said  something  naughty,  and  actually  got  it 
into  print.  Now  it  is,  of  course,  very  stupid  for  the 
bourgeoisie  to  be  shocked.  The  bourgeoisie  would  be 
wiser  to  yawn.  But  it  argues  a  similar  kind  of  stupid- 
ity— anti-stupidity — to  wish  to  shock  them.  But  we 
do  not  wish  to  shock  them,  they  say!  We  are  indif- 
ferent to  the  existence  of  the  bourgeoisie !  Our  aim 
is  simply  to  write  freely  as  artists,  and  to  be  at  liberty 
to  publish  our  work  for  such  as  can  understand  it. 
Publishing,  however,  is  a  public  act;  and  I  agree  with 
the  bourgeoisie  that  the  art  of  an  intimate  circle  or 
group  is  not  of  necessity  a  public  art.  Between  pri- 
vate and  public  morality,  personal  and  public  policy,  in- 
dividual and  communal  art,  there  is  all  the  difference  of 
two  differing  scales  of  value.  Queen  Victoria  did  not 
wish  to  be  addressed  by  Mr.  Gladstone  as  if  she  were  a 
public  meeting.  A  public  meeting  does  not  like  to  be 
addressed  as  if  it  were  a  party  of  personal  friends. 
The  introduction  of  personal  considerations  into  pub- 
lic policy  is  felt  to  be  an  intrusion;  and  to  treat  your 


40  Readers  and  Writers 

friends  as  if  you  were  legislating  on  their  behalf  is  an 
impertinence.  From  all  this  it  follows  that  to  thrust 
all  private  art  into  the  public  eye  is  to  mix  the  two 
worlds.  Only  that  part  of  private  art  that  is  in  good 
public  taste  ought  to  be  exhibited  in  public;  the  rest 
is  for  private,  personal,  individual  consumption,  and 
ought  to  be  left  unpublished,  or  circulated  only  pri- 
vately. Let  the  artist  write  what  pleases  him;  let  him 
circulate  it  among  his  friends;  the  only  criterion  here 
is  personal  taste.  But  immediately  he  proposes  to 
publish  his  work,  he  should  ask  himself  the  question: 
Is  this  in  good  public  taste? 


* 
* 


Mr.  Ezra  Pound  as  Metricist 

Under  the  title  of  Ezra  Pound:  His  Metric  and 
Poetry,  a  whole  book — really,  however,  only  an  essay 
— has  been  devoted  to  the  work  of  this  literary  enigma. 
For  this  honour,  if  honour  it  be,  Mr.  Pound  is  in- 
debted more  to  what  he  has  preached  than  to  what 
he  has  practised;  for  on  his  actual  achievement,  con- 
siderable though  it  is,  not  even  in  America  could  any- 
body have  been  found  to  write  a  book.  Mr.  Pound 
will  not  deny  that  he  is  an  American  in  this  respect, 
if  in  none  other,  that  he  always  likes  to  hitch  his  wagon 
to  a  star.  He  has  always  a  ton  of  precept  for  a 
pound  of  example.  And  in  America,  more  than  in  any 
other  country  save,  perhaps,  Germany,  it  appears  to 
be  required  of  a  man  that  there  shall  be  "significant" 


Mr.  Ezra  Pound  as  Metricist       41 

intention,  aim,  theory — anything  you  like  expressive 
of  direction — in  everything  he  does.  There  does  not 
appear  to  me  to  be  anything  very  original  in  the  crea- 
tion of  poetic  images,  or  even  in  the  employment  of 
irregular  metric;  neither  of  them  can  be  said  to  consti- 
tute a  new  departure  in  poetic  technique.  Yet  Mr. 
Pound  has  elevated  each  of  them  to  be  the  star  of  a 
cult,  with  the  consequence  that  we  now  have  professed 
"schools"  of  poetry,  calling  themselves  Imagist  or 
Verslibrist.  These  are  examples  of  what  I  mean  in 
saying  that  Mr.  Pound  loves  to  hitch  his  wagon  to  a 
star. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  this  habit  of  Mr.  Pound 
has  its  good  as  well  as  its  somewhat  absurd  side;  there 
is  only  a  step  from  the  ridiculous  to  the  sublime.  It 
must  also  be  affirmed,  however  it  may  reflect  upon  our 
English  critics,  that  it  is  precisely  the  good  side  of 
Mr.  Pound's  technique  which  they  usually  condemn. 
For  the  good  side  consists  of  this,  that  all  the  poets  who 
can  claim  to  belong  to  the  school  of  Mr.  Pound  must 
display  in  addition  to  the  above-mentioned  defects,  the 
certain  and  positive  merits  of  study  of  their  art  and 
deliberate  craftsmanship.  No  poet  dare  claim  to  be 
a  pupil  of  Mr.  Pound  who  cannot  prove  that  he  has 
been  to  school  to  poetry,  and  submitted  himself  to  a 
craft-apprenticeship;  and  no  poet  will  long  command 
Mr.  Pound's  approval  who  is  not  always  learning  and 
experimenting.  Now  this,  which  I  call  the  good  side 
of  Mr.  Pound's  doctrine,  is  disliked  in  England,  where 
it  has  for  years  been  the  habit  of  critics  to  pretend  that 
poetry  grows  on  bushes  or  in  parsley-beds.  That 


42  Readers  and  Writers 

poetry  should  be  the  practice  of  "a  learned,  self-con- 
scious craft,"  to  be  carried  on  by  a  "guild  of  adepts," 
appears  to  Mr.  Archer,  for  example,  to  be  a  heresy  of 
the  first  order.  How  much  of  the  best  poetry,  he  ex- 
claims, has  been  written  with  "little  technical  study 
behind  it";  and  how  little  necessary,  therefore,  any 
previous  learning  is.  To  the  dogs  with  Mr.  Pound's 
doctrine !  Let  the  motto  over  the  gates  of  the  Temple 
of  Poetry  be :  "No  previous  experience  required."  It 
will  be  seen,  of  course,  how  the  confusion  of  Mr. 
Archer's  mind  has  arisen.  Because  it  is  a  fact  that 
the  "best"  poetry  looks  effortless,  he  has  fallen  into 
the  spectator's  error  of  concluding  that  it  is  effortless. 
And  because,  again,  a  considerable  part  of  the  work 
of  the  "learned,  self-conscious  craftsmen"  is  pedantic 
and  artificial,  he  has  been  confirmed  in  his  error.  The 
truth  of  the  matter,  however,  is  with  Mr.  Pound. 
Dangerous  as  it  may  be  to  require  that  a  poet  shall 
be  learned  in  his  profession,  it  is  much  more  dangerous 
to  deprecate  his  learning.  By  a  happy  fluke,  it  may 
be,  a  perfect  poem  may  occasionally  be  written  "with- 
out previous  study" ;  from  too  much  previous  study 
there  may  also  occasionally  result  only  verse  smelling 
of  the  lamp;  but  in  the  long  run,  and  for  the  cultiva- 
tion of  poetry  as  an  art,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the 
most  fruitful  way  is  the  way  of  the  craftsman  and  the 
adept. 


* 

*  * 


Mr.  Ezra  Pound  on  Religion       43 
Mr.  Ezra  Pound  on  Religion 

Mr.  Pound  has  been  called  over  the  coals  for  his 
impolite  dismissal  of  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  as  a  danger 
to  English  literature.  But,  good  gracious,  Mr.  G.  K. 
Chesterton's  reputation  is  not  so  frail  that  it  cannot 
take  care  of  itself  against  a  spirited  idiosyncrasy.  Mr. 
Pound  has  expressed  his  honest  opinion;  but  what  is 
discussion  for  but  to  elicit  honest  opinions,  and  then 
to  extract  the  truth  from  them?  There  is  undoubt- 
edly a  fragment  of  truth  in  Mr.  Pound's  view  of  Mr. 
G.  K.  Chesterton's  influence,  and  it  is  this:  that  Mr. 
Chesterton  is  a  most  dangerous  man  to  imitate.  His 
imitators  become  apes.  But  that  is  not  to  say  that 
Mr.  Chesterton  is  not  himself  a  great  writer.  Shake- 
speare is  likewise  a  dangerous  man  to  imitate ;  and  we 
should  only  be  repeating  good  criticism  if  we  affirmed 
that  the  influence  of  Shakespeare  upon  English  style 
has  been  on  the  whole  bad.  But  this  is  not  to  detract 
from  the  greatness  of  Shakespeare.  Every  writer  of 
a  unique  style  is  liable  to  ruin  his  imitators;  and,  from 
this  point  of  view,  the  wise  thing  to  be  done  is  to 
classify  good  writers  as  writers  to  be  imitated  and 
writers  never  to  be  imitated.  Among  the  former  are 
the  writers  whom  personally  I  prefer;  for  I  love  best 
the  men  of  the  eighteenth  century,  who  aimed  at  writ- 
ing as  nearly  as  possible  like  the  world,  and  through 
whom  the  common  genius  of  the  English  language 
spoke.  But  there  is  pleasure  and  profit  also  in  the 
highly  individualized  styles  of  the  latter  sort  of  writers, 


44  Readers  and  Writers 

beginning,  let  us  say,  with  Euphnes,  and  represented 
today  by  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton.  Mr.  Pound  may 
have  no  fancy  for  the  unique  and  personally  invented 
style  of  Mr.  Chesterton,  but  it  is  a  matter  entirely  of 
taste  and  not  of  judgment.  Should  he  announce  that 
he  cannot  tolerate  Swift  or  Burke  or  Sterne,  writers  of 
pure  English,  then,  indeed,  I  should  join  in  deploring 
his  judgment.  As  it  is,  I  listen  to  his  remarks  on  Mr. 
Chesterton  as  I  should  hear  his  opinions  of  crab-soup. 
Coming  to  his  views  upon  religion  and  upon  Chris- 
tianity, I  find  myself  not  so  much  hostile  to  Mr.  Pound 
as  bewildered  by  him;  and  yet  not  bewildered  to  the  de- 
gree of  much  curiosity.  Certain  critical  views  of 
religion  are  stimulating.  Nietzsche's,  for  example, 
or  Huxley's,  or  W.  K.  Clifford's,  or  even  Frazer's. 
You  feel  they  come  from  minds  serious  enough  to  take 
religion  seriously,  and  that  they  are  expressive  rather 
of  impatience  with  the  superficiality  of  current  religion 
than  of  hostility  to  religion  itself.  Nietzsche  and  the 
rest,  in  fact,  were  not  critical  of  religion  and  of  Chris- 
tianity, because  they  were  themselves  indifferent  to 
religion,  but  because  they  were  too  intensely  concerned 
with  the  religious  problem  to  accept  the  popular  so- 
lutions. Mr.  Pound,  on  the  other  hand,  does  not 
appear  to  me  to  be  a  serious  thinker  on  the  subject. 
He  dismisses  the  current  popular  solutions  not  only 
as  if  they  were,  as  they  mostly  are,  superficial  and  ab- 
surd, but  as  if  the  problems  of  conscience,  the  soul, 
sin,  and  of  salvation,  to  which  these  solutions  are  trial 
replies,  were  non-existent  or  trivial.  It  is  his  indif- 
ference to  the  reality  of  the  problems,  and  not  his 


Mr.  Pound,  Caricaturist  45 

criticism  of  the  popular  solutions,  that  keeps  my  mind 
at  a  distance  from  Mr.  Pound's  when  he  is  writing  on 
religion.  He  does  not  so  much  as  even  irritate  me, 
he  simply  leaves  me  as  indifferent  to  his  opinions  as 
he  is  himself. 


* 

*  * 


Mr.  Pound,  Caricaturist 

Mr.  Ezra  Pound  comes  in  for  it  again — as  he  always 
does.  His  idiosyncrasies  are  the  enemies  of  his  per- 
sonality, and  they  will  always,  unless  he  can  amend 
them,  militate  against  both  his  work  and  his  success. 
Mr.  Pound  appears  to  love  to  give  his  readers  the  im- 
pression that  he  is  no  end  of  a  fire-eater,  and  that  he 
is  a  charlatan  of  the  first-water,  setting  up  to  lecture 
better  men  on  the  virtues  he  himself  has  never  culti- 
vated. It  is  an  absolutely  incorrect  picture,  an  ex- 
ceedingly bad  self-portrait,  a  malicious  caricature  of 
himself.  A  psycho-analyst  would  attribute  it  all  to 
"compensation,"  to  an  attempt  on  the  part  of  Mr. 
Pound  to  disguise  his  qualities  as  defects.  In  brief, 
Mr.  Pound  has  not  the  courage  of  his  virtues.  "No 
one,"  says  Mr.  Hartley  in  the  Little  Review,  "admires 
Ezra  Pound  more  than  I  do  ...  but  it  is  his  celestial 
sneer  I  admire."  A  sneer,  celestial  or  mundane,  is, 
however,  the  last  gesture  of  which  Mr.  Pound  is  capa- 
ble. If.  anything,  he  is  too  benignant,  too  enthusias- 
tic, too  anxious  to  find  excuse  for  admiration. 

*  * 


46  Readers  and  Writers 

The  Admirable  Victorians 

I  am  prepared  to  apologize  if  I  have  ever  used 
"Victorian"  in  a  derogatory  sense.  But  I  know  I  have 
not.  I  have  too  deep  a  respect  for  the  Victorian  char- 
acter ever  to  make  light  of  it,  and  especially  for  my 
own  generation,  that  can  afford  to  laugh  at  so  little. 
Mr.  Strachey's  "brilliant"  essays,  therefore,  leave  me 
laughing  at  him  rather  than  with  him.  One  is  com- 
pelled to  take  him  personally,  and  to  turn  the  tables 
upon  Mr.  Strachey  with  the  argumentum  ad  hominem. 
How  do  you  compare  with  the  people  you  write  about? 
For  it  is  the  peculiarity  of  the  Victorians — our  grand- 
fathers and  great-grandfathers — that  whatever  we 
may  feel  about  them  in  our  current  opinions,  some  one 
has  only  to  sneer  at  them  to  provoke  us  to  their  de- 
fence; and  what  better  defence  can  they  ask  than  to 
be  compared,  man  for  man,  with  their  critics?  As 
a  set-off  to  the  "brilliant"  essays  of  Mr.  Strachey — 
how  easy  it  is  to  be  brilliant  nowadays!  I  have  re- 
cently read,  on  the  loan  of  his  great-grandson,  the  pri- 
vately printed  personal  memoir  of  Wm.  Mattingly 
Soundy,  who  died  in  1862,  at  the  full  age  of  96.  For 
24  years  he  was  a  member  of  his  local  Congregational 
church,  and  for  46  years  he  was  deacon.  During 
nearly  the  whole  of  that  time  he  never  missed  a  meet- 
ing, Sunday  or  week-day,  and  was  never  known  to  be 
late,  though  he  lived  two  miles  from  the  church.  It 
is  the  round  of  a  machine,  you  may  say,  and  there  is  no 


French  Clarte  47 

wonder  that  the  age  was  mechanical.  But  I  think  of 
the  passionate  mainspring  that  kept  a  "machine"  going 
for  so  long  without  a  psychological  breakdown.  What 
an  intensity  it  must  have  had!  What  a  character! 
If  to  love  it  is  impossible,  it  is  impossible  not  to  ad- 
mire it;  and  since  we  truly  live  by  admiration,  hope 
and  love,  it  is  something  for  the  Victorians  that  they 
can  still  fill  us  with  admiration.  My  own  generation 
(now  past  as  a  force)  has  provided  the  soul  of  the 
world  with  nothing  so  fine. 


* 
*   * 


French  Clarte 

M.  Vannier's  La  Clarte  Franqaise  does  not  throw 
much  light  upon  the  mysteries  of  French  lucidity.  He 
accepts  as  self-evident  Rivarol's  axiom  that  "what  is 
not  clear  is  not  French" — surely  worthy  to  be  the 
national  device  of  France;  and  he  analyses  with  ad- 
mirable humour  a  considerable  number  of  examples  of 
"clarte,"  and  the  want  of  it.  But  the  mystery  of  lucid- 
ity remains  a  mystery  still.  Flaubert's  practice  of 
reading  his  compositions  aloud  puts  us  on  the  most 
promising  scent,  for  it  is  certain  that  the  French 
"clarte"  is  eminently  readable  aloud  and  in  company. 
A  great  deal  of  our  own  literature  is  meant  for  the 
eye  and  not  for  the  ear,  for  the  study  and  not  for  the 
salon,  with  the  consequence  that  at  its  best  it  is  the 
grand  style  simple,  but  at  its  worst  shocking.  Written 


48  Readers  and  Writers 

for  the  ear,  and  meant  to  be  read  in  company,  French 
literature  is  never  grand,  but  neither  is  it  ever  silly. 
Its  range  is  society,  while  ours  is  solitude. 


*   * 


When  Shall  We  Translate? 

There  is  nothing  particularly  "masterly"  from  the 
modern  English  point  of  view  in  Hobbes's  translation 
of  Pericles's  Funeral  Oration.  His  period  of  English 
prose  appears  to  have  been  ill-adapted  for  the  transla- 
tion of  the  Greek  idiom  of  the  time  of  Pericles.  To 
the  usual  cautions  against  translations  in  general,  we 
ought  to  add  the  caution  against  translations  made  in 
dissimilar  epochs.  It  is  not  at  any  time  in  the  history 
of  a  language  that  a  translation  from  a  foreign  lan- 
guage can  safely  be  undertaken.  In  all  probability, 
indeed,  the  proper  period  for  translation  is  no  longer 
in  point  of  time,  than  the  period  within  which  the 
original  itself  was  written.  If  the  Periclean  Age 
lasted,  let  us  say,  fifty  years,  it  is  within  a  period  in 
English  history  of  the  same  length  that  an  adequate 
translation  can  be  made.  Once  let  that  period  go  by, 
and  a  perfect  translation  will  be  for  ever  impossible. 
And  equally  the  result  will  be  a  failure,  if  the  transla- 
tion is  attempted  before  its  time  has  come.  I  do  not 
think  that  the  Hobbesian  period  of  English  was  in 
key  with  the  period  of  Periclean  Greek;  nor,  again,  do 
I  think  that  our  period  for  perfect  translation  has  yet 
come.  A  "masterpiece"  of  translation  of  Pericles's 


When  Shall  We  Translate          49 

Oration  is  still,  in  my  opinion,  to  be  done.  But  I  am 
confident  that  we  are  approaching  the  proper  period, 
and  in  proof  of  this  I  would  remark  on  the  superiority 
of  Jowett's  translation  over  that  of  Hobbes.  Jowett, 
as  a  writer  of  original  English,  nobody,  I  think,  would 
compare  with  Hobbes  of  Malmesbury.  Hobbes  was 
a  great  pioneer,  a  creator  of  language;  Jowett  was 
only  a  good  writer.  Nevertheless,  the  idiom  in 
which  Jowett  wrote,  was  more  nearly  perfect  (that  is, 
fully  developed)  English  than  the  idiom  in  which 
Hobbes  wrote.  And  since,  in  point  of  development, 
the  correspondence  between  Periclean  Greek  and 
Jowett's  English,  is  closer  than  the  correspondence 
between  Periclean  Greek  and  Hobbes's  English, 
Jowett's  translation  is  nearer  the  original  than 
Hobbes's. 

It  would  be  a  pleasant  exercise  in  style  to  criticize 
Jowett's  translation,  and  a  still  more  profitable  exer- 
cise to  amend  it.  To  a  mere  student  of  comparative 
values  in  Periclean  Greek  and  idiomatic  English,  some 
of  the  errors  in  Jowett's  translation  are  obvious. 
Such  a  student  needs  not  to  refer  with  the  scholar's 
precision  to  the  original  Greek  to  be  able,  with  the  ap- 
proval of  all  men  of  taste,  to  pronounce  that  such  and 
such  a  phrase  or  word  is  most  certainly  not  what  may 
be  called  Periclean  English.  It  stands  to  the  totality 
of  reason  that  it  is  not  so.  We  may  be  certain,  for 
instance,  that  Pericles,  were  he  delivering  his  Oration 
in  English,  with  all  the  taste  and  training  he  possessed 
as  a  Greek  of  his  age,  would  never  have  employed 
such  phrases  as  these:  "commended  the  law-giver," 


50  Readers  and  Writers 

"a  worthy  thing,"  "burial  to  the  dead,"  "reputation 
.  .  .  imperilled  on  ...  the  eloquence,"  "who  knows 
the  facts,"  "suspect  exaggeration."  Pericles,  we  can- 
not but  suppose,  both  from  the  man  and  his  age,  spoke 
with  studied  simplicity,  that  is  to  say,  with  perfect 
naturalness.  The  words  and  phrases  he  used  were  in 
all  probability  the  most  ordinary  to  the  ear  of  the 
Athenian,  and  well  within  the  limits  of  serious  conver- 
sation. But  such  phrases  as  I  have  mentioned  are  not 
of  the  same  English  character;  they  are  written,  not 
spoken  phrases,  and  approximate  more  to  a  leading 
commemorative  article  in  The  Times  than  to  a  speech 
we  should  all  regard  as  excellent.  It  would  be  interest- 
ing to  have  Lord  Rosebery's  version  of  Pericles'  speech, 
or  even  Mr.  Asquith's.  Both,  it  is  probable,  would  be 
nearer  the  original  than  Jowett's,  though  still  some 
distance  off  perfection.  In  another  fifty  years  per- 
fection will  be  reached. 


*** 


Nature  in  Mind 

The  Quest  contains  an  article  by  Mr.  G.  R.  S.  Mead, 
in  which  he  suggests — and,  perhaps,  rather  more  than 
suggests — an  affinity,  if  not  an  identity,  between  the 
"laws"  of  nature  and  the  "laws"  of  mind.  Ever  since 
I  read  the  following  sentence  in  Coleridge's  Biographia 
Liter  aria:  "The  highest  perception  of  natural  philos- 
ophy would  consist  in  the  perfect  spiritualization  of  all 
the  laws  of  nature  into  laws  of  intuition  and  intellect," 


Nature  in  Mind  51 

it  has  been  at  the  back  of  my  mind  as  an  aim  to  keep 
before  philosophy.  Whether  or  not  there  is  a  drum- 
mer in  every  age  with  whom  the  active  thinkers  keep 
in  step,  even  without  being  aware  of  the  fact,  I  can 
only  say  that  more  and  more  evidence  of  this  tendency 
of  thought  is  coming  to  light.  Boutroux's  Contingency 
of  the  Laws  of  Nature  may  be  said  to  have  most  ex- 
plicitly attempted  the  sublimation — or,  dare  we  say, 
the  humanization? — of  the  natural  laws;  but  Bou- 
troux  is  only  one  of  many  philosophers  working  in  the 
same  direction.  Other  areas  of  study  than  that  of 
"pure"  philosophy,  seem  to  have  yielded,  or  to  be 
yielding,  the  same  result.  Mr.  Mead  quotes,  for  in- 
stance, some  recent  studies  of  Animism  to  show  that 
Animism,  which,  together  with  Anthropomorphism,  we 
used  to  dismiss  as  merely  a  primitive  mode  of  thought, 
may,  after  all,  prove  to  contain  a  truth,  the  truth, 
namely,  that  Nature  is  living  and  intelligent,  and,  on 
that  account,  not  so  far  from  human  nature  as  we  had 
come  to  imagine.  "The  more  we  penetrate  Matter," 
says  Mr.  Mead,  "the  more  akin  to  Mind  we  find  it  to 
be."  The  world  is  a  creation  of  mind;  and  the  more 
either  of  the  world  or  of  mind  we  understand  the  more 
we  understand  of  both.  It  is  a  thrilling  idea,  the 
conception  of  the  world  of  nature  as  being  the  exter- 
nalization  of  an  intelligence  akin  to  our  own.  At  the 
same  time,  it  is,  like  all  thrilling  ideas,  associated  with 
considerable  danger.  The  "superstitions"  connected 
with  it  are  perhaps  best  left  under  the  shadow  that 
has  been  cast  upon  them. 


* 

*  * 


52  Readers  and  Writers 

Mr.  Clive  Bell's  Pot 

Mr.  Clive  Bell  cannot  escape  the  charge  of  literary 
insolence  by  giving  to  his  collection  of  essays  the  dep- 
recatory name  of  Pot  Boilers.  That  the  articles  he 
has  reprinted  were  designed  to  boil  Mr.  Clive  Bell's 
pot,  and  did,  in  fact,  keep  it  simmering,  may  be  true 
enough;  for  the  Athenceum,  in  which  most  of  them 
appeared,  was  an  eclectic  journal  with  a  surprising 
taste  for  the  bad  as  well  as  for  the  good.  Mr.  Clive 
Bell's  modesty,  however,  is  titular  only,  for  not  merely 
has  he  published  these  ashes  of  his  yesterday's  fire, 
but  he  imagines  them  to  be  still  ablaze.  "It  charms 
me,"  he  says,  "to  notice  as  I  read  these  essays,  with 
what  care  and  conscience  they  are  done.  ...  I  seem 
consistently  to  have  cared  much  for  four  things — Art, 
Truth,  Liberty,  and  Peace."  These  are  things  which 
a  more  modest  man  would  have  left  his  biographer 
and  eulogist  to  say  of  him;  and  even  then  not  even 
friendship  would  have  made  them  true.  To  Art  and 
Truth,  there  are,  of  course,  a  good  many  references 
in  Mr.  Clive  Bell's  essays,  but  the  mere  mention  of 
these  names  ought  not  to  be  regarded  as  an  evidence 
of  care  for  the  things  themselves.  Cannot  the  names 
of  Art  and  Truth  be  also  taken  in  vain?  In  the  two 
concluding  essays  of  the  book  are  to  be  found  most 
clearly  Mr.  Clive  Bell's  conception  of  Art.  It  is  in- 
distinguishable from  what  may  be  called  the  Bohemian 
conception.  Art  is  not  moral,  art  is  not  useful,  art  is 
not  a  relative  fact;  it  is  an  absolute  to  which  all  these 
other  things  are  relative.  The  artist,  again,  is  not  a 


Mr.  Clive  Bell's  Pot  53 

"practical"  person,  and  it  is  no  use  expecting  of  him 
an  interest  in  the  non-artistic  affairs  of  the  world.  The 
war,  for  instance?  It  is  only  a  means  to  art,  and  what 
should  be  said  of  artists  who  abandon  the  end  to  oc- 
cupy themselves  with  the  means? 

But  this  Bohemian  and  superior  attitude  is  con- 
sistent apparently  with  some  very  mundane  bitterness. 
Mr.  Clive  Bell  does  not  appreciate  the  war,  which  ap- 
pears to  have  put  him  considerably  out,  in  spite  of  his 
Kensington  Olympianism.  He  is  shocked  at  hearing 
that  "this  is  no  time  for  art."  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
he  does  not  appear  to  be  able  to  escape  from  the  war. 
The  penultimate  essay  is  about  Art  and  the  War,  and 
the  first  essay  is  a  palinode  for  the  state  of  affairs  to 
which  the  war  put  an  end.  According  to  Mr.  Clive 
Bell,  the  world  before  the  war  was  in  a  most  promis- 
ing condition  of  renaissance — of  aesthetic  renaissance. 
"Our  governing  classes,"  he  says,  "were  drifting  out 
of  barbarism.  .  .  .  'Society'  was  becoming  open- 
minded,  tired  of  being  merely  decent,  and  was  begin- 
ning to  prefer  the  'clever'  to  the  'good.'  '  But  with 
the  war  all  this  was  interrupted — probably  never  to 
be  resumed;  for  what  is  the  use  of  attempting  to  estab- 
lish an  aesthetic  culture  upon  the  state  of  poverty  which 
will  certainly  ensue  after  the  war?  Poverty  and  art, 
he  as  nearly  as  possible  says,  are  incompatible;  it  is 
only  by  means  of  wealth,  wealth  in  superabundance, 
that  art  is  possible.  And  since  war  is  destructive  of 
wealth,  "war  has  ruined  our  little  patch  of  civility" 
without  bringing  us  anything  in  exchange  for  it.  The 
Bohemian  view  of  art  is  own  brother  to  the  Sardana- 


54  Readers  and  Writers 

palian  view  of  culture  in  general;  it  presupposes  great 
wealth,  while  denying  that  art  is  a  luxury.  Art  is  not 
a  luxury  or  an  elegant  amenity  added  to  life,  says  Mr. 
Clive  Bell.  At  the  same  time,  it  is  only  when  Society 
is  wealthy  that  art  can  flourish.  The  contradiction  is 
obvious,  and  it  pervades  Mr.  Clive  Bell's  work.  It 
is  not  worth  dwelling  on  a  moment. 


* 


The  Criticism  of  Poets 

Professor  Rudmose-Brown,  the  author  of  French 
Literary  Studies,  is  under  the  fatal  illusion  that  it  is 
necessary  (or,  at  any  rate,  proper),  to  write  about 
poetry  poetically;  and  his  comments  are  too  often  in 
this  style:  "The  illimitable  night  of  his  obscurity  is 
strewn  with  innumerable  stars."  But  it  is  a  style  which 
is  not  only  repellent  in  itself,  but  doubly  repellent  from 
its  association  with  an  exposition  of  poetry.  Dr. 
Johnson  has  written  about  poetry  in  the  proper  style. 
He  was  respectful  in  the  very  distance  his  prose  kept 
from  poetic  imagery.  Cold  and  detached  he  may 
have  seemed  to  be,  but  all  good  criticism,  comment, 
and  even  appreciation  labour  of  necessity  under  this 
charge.  What  would  be  said  of  a  judge  who  demon- 
strated the  emotions  of  the  persons  before  him;  or, 
equally,  of  a  judge  who  did  not  feel  them?  To  be  a 
critic  or  judge  of  poetry,  or  of  any  art,  requires,  in 
the  first  instance,  an  intense  sympathetic  power;  but, 
in  the  second  instance,  a  powerful  self-restraint  in  ex- 


"John  E glint on"  55 

pression,  manifested  in  poetical  criticism,  I  should  say, 
by  a  prose  style  free  from  the  smallest  suggestion  of 
poetry. 


*  * 


"John  Eglinton." 

Mr.  "John  Eglinton"  has  been  called  "the  Irish 
Emerson";  but  the  description  of  the  "Irish  Thoreau" 
would  fit  him  much  better.  He  is  transcendental,  like 
Emerson,  but  after  a  different,  and  a  less  high-falutin' 
manner — the  manner  of  transcendental  common  sense. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  shares  with  Thoreau  the  quality 
of  passionate  independence,  and  what  may  be  called 
adventurous  solitude.  "John  Eglinton"  names  his  es- 
says Anglo-Irish,  and  they  answer  even  more  accurately 
to  the  description  than  the  compound  implies;  for 
they  are  essays  upon  the  hyphen  that  joins  them.  Ex- 
actly as  Thoreau  was  most  completely  at  home  in  no 
other  man's  land  between  the  world  and  the  wood, 
"John  Eglinton"  is  at  his  easiest  somewhere  between 
England  and  Ireland.  He  is  not  Irish,  nor  is  he 
English.  He  is  not  Anglo-Irish  either ;  but,  once  more, 
the  hyphen  between  them.  It  is  this  sense  of  difference 
from  both  elements  that  makes  of  "John  Eglinton" 
at  once  so  attractive,  so  significant,  and  so  illuminating 
a  writer  and  thinker.  Being  between  two  worlds, 
and  with  a  foot  in  each,  he  understands  each  world 
in  a  double  sense,  from  within  and  from  without.  To 
each  in  turn  he  can  be  both  interpreter  and  critic;  and 


56  Readers  and  Writers 

in  these  delightful  essays  he  is  to  be  found  alternately 
defending  and  attacking  each  of  the  national  elements 
between  which  his  perch  is  placed.  "Candid  friend" 
would,  perhaps,  be  a  fair  description  of  his  attitude 
towards  both  nations,  if  the  phrase  were  not  associated 
with  the  disagreeable.  But  since  "John  Eglinton"  is 
anything  but  acid  in  his  comments,  and  writes  of  both 
nations  in  a  spirit  of  mingled  admiration  and  judgment, 
I  can  think  of  nothing  better  at  the  moment  than  my 
image  of  the  hyphen.  He  is  alone  between  two 
worlds,  friendly  but  critical  equally  of  both. 


* 

*   * 


Irish  Humour 

Mr.  Stephen  Gwynn's  Irish  Books  and  Irish  People 
contains  an  essay  on  "Irish  Humour."  Mr.  Gwynn 
is  severe  but  just.  He  refers  to  the  "damning  effects" 
of  the  "easy  fluency  of  wit"  and  the  "careless  spon- 
taneity of  laughter"  which  characterize  Irish  humour. 
It  would  be  terrible,  however,  to  have  to  admit  that 
these  divine  qualities  are  "defects"  in  the  accepted 
sense  of  qualities  manques;  and  the  "defect"  arises,  I 
think,  not  from  the  presence  of  these  qualities  in  the 
Irish  genius,  but  from  the  absence  of  the  counter- 
balancing qualities  of  weight,  high  seriousness,  and 
good  judgment.  It  would  almost  seem  that  the  "elder 
gods"  departed  from  Ireland  centuries  ago,  leaving  in 
sole  possession  the  "younger  gods"  of  irresponsible 
and  incontinent  laughter.  As  Mr.  Gwynn  says,  "Irish 


The  Literary  Drama  of  Ireland     57 

humour  makes  you  laugh";  it  always  takes  one  by  sur- 
prise. But  the  laughter  has  no  echoes  in  the  deeper 
levels  of  consciousness ;  it  rings  true  but  shallow.  Dog- 
matism on  racial  psychology  is  dangerous,  and  I  have 
no  wish  to  exacerbate  feelings,  already  too  sore;  but, 
as  a  literary  critic,  I  venture  my  judgment  that  the 
Irish  genius,  as  manifested  in  literature  during  the  last 
century,  is  wanting  in  the  solidity  that  comes  only  from 
hard  work.  Every  Irishman,  speaking  roughly,  is  a 
born  genius;  but  few  Irishmen  complete  their  birth  by 
"making"  themselves.  Wit  comes  to  them  too  easily 
to  be  anything  but  a  tempting  line  of  least  resistance. 


* 

*  * 


The  Literary  Drama  of  Ireland 

While  exceedingly  painstaking,  thorough,  and  well- 
documented,  Mr.  Boyd's  essay  on  The  Contemporary 
Drama  of  Ireland  cannot  be  said  to  add  much  value  to 
the  value  of  a  record.  Unlike  his  recent  volume  of 
Appreciations  and  Depreciations,  his  present  work 
carefully,  and  I  should  almost  say,  timidly,  avoids 
coming  to  any  large  and  personal  conclusions,  save  in 
the  case,  perhaps,  of  the  plays  of  Mr.  St.  John  Ervine. 
The  reason  for  this  diffidence  I  take  to  be  rather  an 
apprehension  of  what  he  might  discover  where  his  real 
conclusions  might  prove  to  be  than  any  inability  to 
arrive  at  them;  for  I  cannot  think  that  upon  any  other 
ground  so  usually  decisive  a  mind  would  have  been 
content  to  leave  his  readers  in  the  dark.  But  what 


58  Readers  and  Writers 

then  is  it  that  Mr.  Boyd  may  conceivably  have  feared 
to  discover?  It  is  obvious  enough,  I  think,  to  an  out- 
sider— to  one,  I  mean,  who  does  not  belong  to  the 
coterie  that  calls  itself  the  Irish  literary  movement; 
it  is  that  the  contemporary  drama  of  Ireland  is  the 
history  of  a  rapid  decline. 

Mr.  Boyd  is,  of  course,  honest  with  his  facts,  and 
the  material  is  thus  before  us  for  a  judgment.  He 
does  not  conceal  from  us,  for  instance,  the  illuminating 
circumstances  that  the  Irish  dramatic  movement  actu- 
ally began  under  the  impulse  of  the  Continental  move- 
ment, and  that  its  earliest  authors  were  desirous,  not 
so  much  of  creating  an  Irish  drama,  as  of  creating  a 
drama  for  Ireland.  Mr.  Edward  Martyn,  who  was 
undoubtedly  the  chief  pioneer,  was  himself  a  follower 
of  Ibsen  and  aimed  at  writing  and  producing  what  may 
be  called  Ibsen  plays.  But  this  praiseworthy  attempt 
to  reintroduce  the  world  into  Ireland  was  defeated  by 
the  apparently  incorrigible  tendency  of  the  native  Irish 
mind  to  reduce  the  world  to  the  size  of  Dublin.  In 
rather  less  than  two  years,  during  which  time  some  six 
or  seven  plays  were  produced,  the  Irish  Literary 
Theatre,  founded  by  Martyn  and  Yeats,  came  to  an 
end,  to  have  its  place  taken  almost  immediately  by  the 
Irish  National  Theatre,  which  was  formed  about  the 
groups  of  Irish  players  calling  themselves  the 
Irish  National  Drama  Society.  But  what  has  been 
the  consequence  of  this  contraction  of  aim  and  of 
interest?  That  plays  of  some  value  as  folk-drama 
have  resulted  from  it  nobody  would  deny;  but  equally 
nobody  would  maintain  that  the  world  has  been  en- 


Mr.  Standish  O'Grady  59 

riched  by  it  in  its  dramatic  literature.  Ireland,  in 
other  words,  has  accepted  a  gift  from  the  world  with- 
out returning  it;  her  literary  coterie  has  taken  the  in- 
spiration of  the  Continent  and  converted  it  to  a  purely 
nationalist  use. 

Even  against  this  there  would  be  nothing  to  be  said 
if  it  succeeded;  but  fortunately  for  the  world-principle 
it  can  be  shown  that  such  a  procedure  ends  in  sterility. 
As  the  reader  turns  over  the  pages  of  Mr.  Boyd's 
faithful  record  of  the  course  of  the  drama  in  Ireland, 
he  cannot  but  be  aware  of  a  gradual  obscuration.  One 
by  one  the  lamps  lit  by  Martyn,  Moore,  and  others, 
which  illuminate  the  earlier  pages,  go  out,  leaving  the 
reader  in  the  later  pages  groping  his  way  through 
petty  controversies  acid  with  personality,  and  through 
an  interminable  undergrowth  of  sickly  and  stunted 
productions  about  which  even  Mr.  Boyd  grows  impa- 
tient. The  vision  splendid  with  which  the  record  be- 
gins dies  down  to  a  twilight,  to  a  darkness,  and  finally 
to  black  night.  The  world  has  once  more  been  shut 
out. 


* 


Mr.  Standish  O'Grady 

Mr.  Standish  O'Grady's  The  Flight  of  the  Eagle  is 
not  a  romance  in  the  ordinary  sense;  it  is  not  an  in- 
vented story,  but  an  actual  historical  episode  treated 
romantically.  The  period  is  Elizabethan,  and  the 
story  turns  mainly  on  the  careers  of  Sir  William 


60  Readers  and  Writers 

Parrett,  an  English  "Lord-Lieutenant"  of  Ireland, 
who  appears  to  have  suffered  the  usual  fate  of  a  pop- 
ular English  Governor,  and  Red  Hugh  O'Donnell  or 
Hue  Roe  of  Tir-Connall,  which  is  now  Donegal.  If 
acquaintance  with  Irish  history  is  ever  to  be  made  by 
English  readers,  the  means  must  be  romances  of  this 
kind.  History  proper  is,  as  a  rule,  carefully  ignored 
by  the  average  reader,  who  must  therefore  have  facts, 
if  he  is  ever  to  have  them,  presented  in  the  form  of 
a  story.  It  is  only  by  this  means,  and  thanks  to  Scott 
in  the  first  instance,  that  the  history  of  Scotland  has 
penetrated  in  any  degree  beyond  the  border.  Only 
by  this  means,  again,  have  various  countries  and  nations 
been  brought  home  to  the  intellectually  idle  English 
reader  by  writers  like  Kipling.  Both  as  a  story-writer 
and  as  the  first  and  greatest  of  the  Irish  historians 
of  Ireland,  Mr.  Standish  O'Grady  is  qualified  to  do 
for  Ireland  what  Scott  after  his  own  fashion  has  done 
for  Scotland,  namely,  bring  his  country  into  the  his- 
toric consciousness  of  the  world. 


*  * 


Mr.  Standish  O'Grady,  Enchanter 

The  Selected  Essays  and  Passages  from  Standish 
O'Grady  isi  a  priceless  anthology  of  this  neglected 
author.  Very  few  people  in  England  realize  that  Mr. 
Standish  O'Grady  is  more  than  any  other  Irishman 
the  rediscoverer  of  ancient  and,  in  consequence,  the 


Mr.  Standish  O'Grady,  Enchanter     61 

creator  of  modern  Ireland.  His  very  first  work  on 
the  Heroic  Period  of  Irish  history  appeared  in  1878; 
it  was  published  at  his  own  expense,  and  had  a  small 
and  a  slow  sale;  but  today  it  is  the  inspiration  of  the 
Celtic  revival.  "Legends,"  says  Mr.  O'Grady,  "are 
the  kind  of  history  which  a  nation  desires  to  possess.'* 
For  the  same  reason,  legends  are  the  kind  of  history 
which  a  nation  tends  to  produce.  I  am  not  certain 
that  it  would  not  have  been  well  to  leave  the  legends 
of  ancient  Ireland  in  their  dust  and  oblivion.  They 
go  back  to  remote  periods  in  time,  and  seem,  even  then, 
to  echo  still  earlier  ages.  It  is  possible,  for  instance, 
that  Ireland  was  a  nation  over  four  thousand  years 
ago.  Some  contend  that  a  Buddhist  civilization  pre- 
ceded the  Christian.  Characteristically,  it  has  been 
thought  that  Ireland  supported  Carthage  against 
Rome.  But  what  is  the  present  value  of  these  revivals 
of  infantile  memories?  They  cannot  be  realized  to- 
day, and  to  dwell  upon  them  is  to  run  the  risk  of  a 
psychic  regression  from  waking  to  dreaming.  "En- 
chantment," Mr.  O'Grady  tells  us,  "is  a  fact  in  nature." 
So  potent  a  charm  as  himself  has  created  may  have 
been  responsible — who  dare  say? — for  the  recall  to 
present-day  Irish  consciousness,  of  early  historic  ex- 
perience that  were  best  forgotten.  Is  it  not  a  fact 
that  the  mood  of  Ireland  today  is  between  the  legend- 
ary and  the  dreaming?  Is  not  the  "ideal"  Irishman 
today  Cuculain  of  Dundalk  talking  and  acting  in  his 
sleep?  It  is  a  question  for  psycho-analysis. 


*   * 


62  Readers  and  Writers 

Les  Sentiments  de  Julien  Benda 

I  thought  for  some  time  of  translating  Les  Senti- 
ments de  Critias,  recently  published  in  Paris  by  M. 
Julien  Benda.  The  style  is  excellent,  and  M.  Benda 
has  the  gifts  of  epigram  and  irony;  but,  upon  second 
thoughts,  the  inappositeness  of  such  a  style  to  the  situ- 
ation in  which  we  find  ourselves  forbade  me.  As  M. 
Benda  himself  says,  "there  is  no  elegance  about  the 
war."  And  success  in  writing  about  it  elegantly  must 
needs,  therefore,  be  a  literary  failure.  Critias's  "senti- 
ments" moreover,  appear,  when  compared  with  the 
real  sentiments  evoked  by  the  contemplation  of  the 
war,  a  little  literary.  He  is  like  a  sadder  and  a  wiser 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  flickering  epigrammatically  over 
the  carnage.  Impeccable  as  his  opinions  usually  are, 
they  are  expressed  too  lightly  to  be  impressive,  and 
too  carefully  to  be  regarded  as  wholly  natural.  And 
that  M.  Benda  can  do  no  other  is  evident  in  his  Open 
Letter  to  M.  Romain  Rolland,  whom  he  considers  a 
prig.  If  he  had  been  capable  of  impassioned  rhetoric 
it  is  in  this  address  that  he  would  have  shown  his  skill, 
for  the  subject  is  to  his  liking,  and  the  material  for 
an  indictment  is  ample.  But  the  most  striking  sentence 
he  achieves  is  that  "We  asked  for  judgment  and  you 
gave  us  a  sermon."  It  is  pretty,  but  it  is  "art." 


* 

*  * 


Convalescence  After  Newspaper     63 
Convalescence  After  Newspaper 

Matthew  Arnold  used  to  say  that  to  get  his  feet 
wet  spoiled  his  style  for  days.  But  there  is  a  far  worse 
enemy  of  style  than  natural  damp ;  it  is  too  much  news- 
paper-reading. Too  much  newspaper  not  only  spoils 
one's  style,  it  takes  off  the  edge  of  one's  taste,  so  that 
I  know  not  what  grindstones  are  necessary  to  put  it 
on  again.  Indulgent  readers,  I  have  been  compelled 
for  some  weeks  to  read  too  much  newspaper,  with  the 
consequence  that  at  the  end  of  my  task  I  was  not  only 
certain  that  my  little  of  style  was  gone,  but  I  was  in- 
different in  my  taste.  The  explanation  of  the  reductio 
ad  absurdum  to  which  an  overdose  of  newspaper  leads 
is  to  be  found,  I  think,  in  the  uniformity  mass  and 
collectivity  of  newspaper  literature.  The  writing  that 
fills  the  Press  is  neither  individual  nor  does  it  aim  at 
individuality.  If  a  citizen's  meeting,  a  jury,  or  the 
House  of  Commons  were  to  perform  the  feat  of  mak- 
ing its  voice  heard,  the  style  of  their  oracles  would  be 
perfect  newspaper.  But  literature,  I  need  not  say,  is 
not  made  after  this  fashion;  nor  is  it  inspired  by  such 
performances.  Literature,  like  all  art,  is  above  every- 
thing, individual  expression.  Gardez-vous!  I  do  not 
mean  that  literature  is  a  personal  expression  of  the  per- 
sonal opinion  of  the  writer.  On  the  contrary,  it  is 
the  role  of  newspaper  to  give  common  expression  to 
personal  opinions,  but  it  is  the  function  of  literature  to 
give  personal  expression  to  common  opinions.  And 
since  it  is  only  personal  expression  that  provokes  and 


64  Readers  and  Writers 

inspires  personal  expression,  from  newspapers  one  can 
derive  no  stimulus  to  literature,  but  only  the  opposite, 
a  disrelish  and  a  distaste. 

How  to  recover  one's  health  after  newspaper  poi- 
soning is  a  problem.  To  plunge  back  forthwith  into 
books  was  for  me  an  impossibility.  It  was  necessary 
to  begin  again  from  the  very  beginning  and  gradually 
to  accustom  myself  to  the  taste  for  literature  again. 
Re-arranging  my  books,  and  throwing  away  the  cer- 
tainly-done with  was,  I  found,  as  useful  a  preliminary 
tonic  as  any  other  I  could  devise.  In  particular  there 
is  a  satisfaction  in  throwing  out  books  which  makes 
this  medicine  as  pleasant  as  it  is  tonic.  It  visibly 
reduces  the  amount  left  to  be  read;  there  is  then  not 
so  much  on  one's  plate  that  the  appetite  revolts  at  the 
prospect.  And  who  can  throw  away  a  book  without 
glancing  into  it  to  make  sure  that  it  will  never  again 
be  wanted?  Picking  and  tasting  in  this  indeliberate 
way,  the  invalid  appetite  is  half  coaxed  to  sit  up  and 
take  proper  nourishment.  This  destruction  and  re- 
construction I  certainly  found  recovering,  and  I  can, 
therefore,  commend  them  to  be  included  in  the  phar- 
macopaeias. 

Another  nourishing  exercise  when  you  are  in  this 
state  is  the  overhauling  of  your  accumulations  of 
memoranda,  cuttings  and  note-books.  I  have  sat  for 
hours  during  the  last  few  days,  like  a  beaver  unbuild- 
ing its  dam,  turning  out  with  a  view  to  destroying  their 
contents,  drawer  after  drawer  and  shelf  upon  shelf. 
It  is  fatal  to  set  about  the  operation  with  any  tender- 
ness. Your  aim  must  be  to  destroy  everything  which 


Convalescence  After  Newspaper     65 

does  not  command  you  to  spare  it.  The  tragic  reck- 
lessness of  the  procedure  is  the  virtue  of  the  medicine. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  there  is  little  or  nothing  now  left 
in  my  drawers  for  future  use.  Nearly  all  my  paper- 
boats  have  been  burned,  including  some  three-decked 
galleons  which  were  originally  designed  to  bring  me 
fame.  No  matter;  the  Rubicon  is  crossed,  and  to  be 
on  the  other  side  of  newspaper  with  no  more  than  a 
thin  portfolio  of  notes  is  to  have  escaped  cheaply. 

For  the  humour  of  it,  however,  I  will  record  a  care- 
ful exception.  It  appears,  after  all,  that  I  was  not  so 
mad  as  I  seemed.  Perchance  newspaper,  being  only 
a  feigned  literature,  induces  only  a  feigned  madness. 
Be  it  as  it  may.  I  find  that  my  current  note-book, 
though  as  handy  and  tempting  to  be  destroyed  as  any 
other,  was  nevertheless  destroyed  only  after  the  cream 
of  it  had  been  whipped  into  the  permanent  book  which 
I  have  kept  through  many  rages  for  a  good  many  years. 
The  extracts  are  here  before  me  as  I  write  in  conva- 
lescence. It  is  amusing  to  me  to  observe,  moreover, 
that  their  cream  is  not  very  rich.  Much  better  has 
gone  into  the  bonfire.  Why,  then,  did  I  save  these 
and  sacrifice  those?  Look  at  a  few  of  them.  "No- 
body's anything  always" — is  there  aught  irrecoverable 
in  that  to  have  compelled  me  to  spare  it?  "Lots  of 
window,  but  no  warehouse" — a  remark,  I  fancy,  in- 
tended to  hit  somebody  or  other  very  hard  indeed — 
but  does  it?  Is  any  of  the  present  company  fitted 
with  a  cap?  "The  judgment  of  the  world  is  good, 
but  few  can  put  it  into  words."  That  is  a  premoni- 
tory symptom,  you  will  observe,  of  a  remark  made  a 


66  Readers  and  Writers 

few  lines  above  to  the  effect  that  literature  is  a  per- 
sonal expression  of  a  common  opinion  or  judgment. 
I  have  plainly  remembered  it.  Apropos  of  the  New 
Age,  I  must  have  told  somebody,  and  stolen  home  to 
write  it  down,  that  its  career  is  that  of  a  rocking-horse, 
all  ups  and  downs  but  never  any  getting  forward.  It 
is  too  true  to  be  wholly  amusing;  let  me  horse-laugh 
at  it  and  pass  it  on.  "A  simple  style  is  like  sleep,  it 
will  not  come  by  effort."  Not  altogether  true,  but  true 
enough.  The  rest  are  not  much  worse  or  better,  and 
the  puzzle  is  to  explain  why  those  should  be  taken  and 
these  left. 

Again  apropos,  may  a  physician  who  has  healed  him- 
self offer  this  piece  of  advice?  Read  your  own  note- 
books often.  I  have  known  some  people  who  have  a 
library  of  note-books  worth  a  dukedom,  who  never 
once  looked  into  them  after  having  filled  them.  That 
is  collecting  mania  pure  and  simple.  From  another 
offensive  angle  what  a  confession  of  inferior  taste  is 
made  in  preferring  the  note-books  of  others  to  one's 
own.  A  little  more  self-respect  in  this  matter  is  clearly 
necessary  if  your  conversation  is  to  be  personal  at  all; 
for  in  all  probability  the  references  and  quotations  you 
make  without  the  authority  of  your  own  collection  are 
hackneyed.  They  are  the  reach-me-downs  of  every 
encyclopaedia.  Is  this  the  reason  that  the  vast  ma- 
jority of  current  quotations  are  as  worn  as  they  are; 
that  a  constant  reader,  forewarned  of  the  subject  about 
to  be  dealt  with,  is  usually  forearmed  against  the  tags 
he  will  find  employed  in  it?  In  any  case,  the  advice 
I  have  just  given  is  the  corrective  of  this  depressing 


Nature  in  English  Literature       67 

phenomenon  of  modern  writing.  You  have  only  to 
trade  in  your  own  note-books  to  be,  and  to  give  the 
air  of  being,  truly  original. 

Browsing  is  a  rather  more  advanced  regimen  for 
convalescence  than  the  re-arrangement  of  books.  The 
latter  can  be  performed  without  the  smallest  taste  for 
reading.  It  is  a  matter  of  sizing  them  up,  and  any 
bookseller's  apprentice  can  do  it.  But  browsing  means 
dipping  into  the  contents  here  and  there;  it  is  both  a 
symptom  of  returning  health  and  a  means  to  it.  In 
the  last  few  days  I  must  have  nibbled  in  a  hundred  dif- 
ferent pastures,  chiefly,  I  think,  in  the  pastures  of 
books  about  books.  De  Quincey,  Matthew  Arnold, 
Bagehot,  Macaulay,  Johnson,  etc. — what  meadows, 
what  lush  grass,  what  feed!  After  all,  one  begins  to 
say,  literature  cannot  be  unsatisfying  that  fed  such  bulls 
and  that  so  plumped  their  minds.  It  cannot  be  only 
a  variety  of  newspaper.  Thus  a  new  link  with  health 
is  established,  and  one  becomes  able  to  take  one's 
books  again.  Here  I  should  end,  but  that  a  last  ob- 
servation in  the  form  of  a  question  occurs  to  me.  Is 
not  or  can  not  a  taste  for  literature  be  acquired  by  the 
same  means  by  which  it  can  be  re-acquired?  Are  not 
the  child  and  the  invalid  similar?  In  that  case  the 
foregoing  directions  may  be  not  altogether  useless. 


*   * 


Nature  in  English  Literature 

In  observation  of  Nature,  English  literature  excels 
all  others.     But  that  is  by  no  means  to  say  that  every 


68  Readers  and  Writers 

English  writer  upon  Nature  is  good.  The  astonishing 
thing  is  that  contemporary  with  such  masters  of  both 
Nature-observation  and  literary  expression  as — to 
name  but  two — Mr.  W.  H.  Hudson  and  Mr.  Warde 
Fowler  (and  half  a  dozen  others  could  be  named  in 
the  same  street)  there  should  still  be  so  many  writers 
insensible  enough  to  perfection  to  write  about  Nature 
when  they  have  little  to  say  and  few  gifts  of  expression. 
You  would  think  that  having  seen  the  sun  they  would 
not  light  a  candle,  or  that  if  they  did,  nobody  would 
look  at  it.  But  the  truth  is  that  not  only  are  many 
candles  lit,  but  they  are  all  much  admired — much 
more,  indeed,  than  the  suns  themselves.  There  may 
be  a  good  reason  for  it,  namely,  that  the  reading  public 
is  so  much  in  love  with  Nature-writing  that  the  best 
is  not  good  enough  for  us.  Or,  again,  everybody 
living  in  the  country  and  having  a  pen  at  all,  wishes  to 
write  his  own  Nature-observations  as  everybody  wishes 
to  write  his  own  love-lyrics,  regardless  of  the  fact  that 
the  best  love-lyrics  have  already  been  written.  It 
may  be  so;  but  the  admission  appears  to  me  to  be  over- 
generous. 

Mr.  Percy  W.  D.  Izzard  has  published  in  book 
form  his  "Year  of  Country  Days"  under  the  general 
title  of  Homeland.  The  series  has  appeared  in  the 
Dally  Mail,  where  it  appears  to  have  given  pleasure 
to  a  considerable  number  of  readers.  I  do  not  doubt 
the  fact.  Even  the  least  suggestion  of  Nature  would 
be  a  relief  in  the  stuffy  and  bawling  atmosphere  of  the 
Daily  Mail.  But  in  the  form  of  a  book,  in  which  three 
hundred  and  sixty-five  of  them  appear,  they  are  almost 


S.  S.  S.  69 

intolerable.  Their  value  lay  in  their  contrast  to  the 
surrounding  columns  of  the  journal  in  which  they  were 
published.  Take  away  that  background  and  let  them 
stand  by  themselves,  and  they  are  seen  to  be  what  they 
are — pale,  anaemic,  and  not  very  knowledgeable  com- 
monplace observations.  Nothing  really  exciting  ap- 
pears to  have  happened  in  the  country  under  Mr. 
Izzard's  observation.  When  reading  Jefferies  or  Hud- 
son or  Warde  Fowler  or  Selous,  you  are  made  to  feel, 
in  a  simple  walk  along  a  hedgerow,  that  something 
dramatic  is  afoot.  Discovery  is  in  the  air.  But  Mr. 
Izzard  is  never  fortunate,  and  all  he  has  to  record  are 
the  common  places  of  the  country-side,  which  I  could 
as  easily  reconstruct  from  a  calendar  as  gather  from 
his  text,  "The  silver  clouds  are  heaped  together  in 
billowy  masses  that  sail  with  deeps  of  Italian  blue 
between."  How  pretty!  But  the  delight  is  wanting. 


* 
*   * 


S.  S.  S. 

The  Simplified  Spelling  Society  has  broken  loose 
from  obscurity  again  in  the  issue  of  a  new  pamphlet, 
called  Breaking  the  Spell;  an  Appeal  to  Common  Sense. 
A  preface  contributed  by  Dr.  Macan  rehearses  all  the 
old  "reasons"  for  simplifying  our  spelling  with  as  little 
attention  as  ever  to  the  real  reasons  against  it. 
"Spelling,"  we  are  told,  "should  be  the  simplest  of 
all  arts."  It  is  so  in  Spanish,  in  Italian,  in  Welsh, 
and  in  Dutch,  and  it  was  so  in  Greek  and  Latin.  Why 


yo  Readers  and  Writers 

not,  therefore,  in  English?  The  reasoning,  however, 
is  ridiculous,  for  it  assumes  that  it  was  by  some  delib- 
erate and  self-conscious  design  that  these  languages 
came  to  be  spelled  phonetically,  and  hence,  that  we 
have  only  to  follow  them  faithfully  (and  the  advice 
of  the  S.  S.  S.)  in  order  to  place  our  language  in  a 
similar  state.  Language,  however,  is  not  a  product 
of  logic  and  science,  but  of  art  and  taste.  It  is  de- 
termined not  by  reason  alone,  but  by  the  totality  of 
our  judgment,  in  which  many  other  factors  than  reason 
are  included.  To  ask  us  to  "reform"  our  spelling  in 
order  to  make  it  "reasonable"  is  to  ask  us  to  forgo  the 
satisfaction  of  every  intellectual  taste,  save  that  of 
logic;  a  procedure  that  would  not  only  "reform"  our 
spelling,  but  all  literature  into  the  bargain.  It  is  pre- 
tended that  the  adoption  of  simplified  spelling  would 
have,  at  worst,  only  a  passing  effect  upon  the  well-being 
of  literature.  If,  for  example,  all  the  English  classics 
were  re-spelled  in  conformity  with  phonetic  rules,  and 
their  use  made  general,  very  soon,  we  are  told,  we 
should  forget  their  original  idiosyncrasies,  and  love 
them  in  their  new  spelling  as  much  as  ever.  But 
people  who  argue  in  this  way  must  have  been  blinded 
in  their  taste  in  their  pursuit  of  rationalistic  uniformity. 
Literature  employs  words  not  for  their  rational  mean- 
ing alone,  not  even  for  their  sound  alone,  but  for  their 
combined  qualities  of  meaning,  sound,  sight,  associa- 
tion, history,  and  a  score  of  other  attributes.  By  re- 
ducing words  to  a  rational  rule  of  phonetic  spelling, 
more  than  half  of  these  qualities  would  be  entirely, 
or  almost  entirely,  eliminated.  A  re-spelled  Shake- 


Sterne  Criticism  71 

speare,  for  instance,  if  it  should  ever  take  the  place 
of  the  present  edition,  would  be  a  new  Shakespeare  — 
a  Shakespeare  translated  from  the  coloured  language 
in  which  he  thought  and  wrote  into  a  language  of  logi- 
cal symbols.  An  exact  analogy  —  as  far  as  any  anal- 
ogy can  be  exact  —  for  the  proposal  of  the  S.  S.  S.  would 
be  to  propose  to  abolish  the  use  of  colour  in  pictorial 
art,  and  to  produce  everything  in  black  and  white. 
The  colour-blind  would,  no  doubt,  be  satisfied  in  the 
one  case,  and,  in  the  other,  the  word-blind  would  be 
equally  pleased.  Fortunately,  both  proposals  have  the 
same  chance  of  success. 


Sterne  Criticism 

Everybody  knows  that  Sterne's  Sentimental  Journey 
broke  off  suddenly  in  the  second  book  at  the  crisis  of  a 
Shandian  incident.  What  everybody  does  not  know  — 
I  confess  I  only  learnt  it  myself  a  few  days  ago  —  is 
that  Sterne's  Editor  "Eugenius"  not  only  concluded 
the  incident,  but  carried  on  the  journey  to  the  extent 
of  another  two  books.  He  did  this,  he  informs  us, 
from  notes  and  materials  left  or  communicated  to  him 
by  Sterne  himself,  and  he  is  so  frank  as  to  say  that  he 
has  striven  to  complete  the  work  in  the  style  and  man- 
ner of  his  late  friend.  Having  a  particular  admira- 
tion for  the  style  of  Sterne,  which,  to  my  mind,  is  the 
easiest  ever  achieved  in  English,  I  have  now  a  double 
resentment  against  the  presumptuous  Eugenius.  In 


72  Readers   and    Writers 

the  first  place,  I  question  the  man's  veracity  almost 
as  much  as  the  veracity  of  Sterne  himself  is  to  be  ques- 
tioned in  the  matter  of  Sterne's  intention  of  completing 
his  journey.  The  Journey  was  a  tour  de  force;  it  was 
the  result  as  it  were,  of  a  challenge.  Sterne  had  made 
a  bet  that  he  would  maintain  the  reader's  interest  in  a 
series  of  the  most  trivial  incidents  by  his  mere  manner 
of  writing  about  them.  That  he  had  any  other  inten- 
tion than  that  of  showing  his  power  I  do  not  for  a 
moment  believe;  least  of  all  the  suggestion  that  he  had 
a  plan  of  writing  in  his  mind  which  required  the  book 
to  be  finished  in  four  sections,  four  and  just  four. 
Eugenius's  excuses  that  he  had  often  discussed  the  com- 
pletion of  the  Journey  with  Sterne,  and  had  heard  from 
him  the  "facts,  events,  and  observations,"  intended 
to  be  introduced  into  the  unwritten  book,  are  thus  a 
mere  literary  device  for  getting  his  own  work  tied  to 
Sterne's  kite.  Even  if  Sterne  gave  him  authority  for 
it,  I  should  refuse  to  believe  it,  since  Sterne  may  easily 
have  been  badgered  into  consenting;  and,  in  any  case, 
is  not  necessarily  to  be  believed  upon  a  matter  of  fact. 
One's  resentment  is  embittered  by  the  manner  in  which 
Eugenius  makes  the  continuation.  It  is  notorious  that 
Sterne  never  made  a  statement  that  could  definitely 
incriminate  himself.  It  was  his  whole  art  to  leave 
everything  to  his  readers'  imagination,  and  to  put  upon 
them  the  odium  of  the  obvious  interpretation.  An  ad- 
mission on  his  part  would  have  been  fatal  not  only  to 
himself,  but  to  the  style  and  intention  of  his  work, 
which  may  be  described  as  skating  upon  thin  ice. 
Eugenius,  however,  in  spite  of  all  the  intimacy  which  he 


Sterne  on  Love  in  France          73 

says  subsisted  between  himself  and  Mr.  Sterne,  was 
so  far  from  having  appreciated  the  elementary  quality 
of  the  Journey  that  in  completing  the  very  incident  on 
which  Book  Two  breaks  off,  he  falls  into  the  blunder 
of  committing  Sterne  to  a  "criminal"  confession.  I 
need  not  say  what  the  confession  is;  it  is  the  obvious 
deduction  to  be  drawn  from  the  description  provided 
by  Sterne  himself.  And  it  is  precisely  on  this  account 
that  I  am  certain  Sterne  would  never  have  made  it. 


* 
* 


Sterne  on  Love  in  France 

One  of  my  correspondents  must  have  been  reading 
Sterne  at  the  same  time  that  I  was  being  annoyed  by 
Eugenius,  for  he  has  written  to  remind  me  of  Sterne's 
opinion  of  Love  as  it  is  understood  in  France.  "The 
French,"  wrote  Sterne,  "have  certainly  got  the  credit 
of  understanding  more  of  Love,  and  making  it  better 
than  any  other  nation  upon  the  earth;  but  for  my  own 
part  I  think  them  arrant  bunglers,  and  in  truth,  the 
worst  set  of  marksmen  that  ever  tried  Cupid's  pa- 
tience." My  correspondent  recalls  the  fact  from  the 
dark  backward  and  abysm  of  time  that  in  a  discussion 
of  Stendhal,  I  expressed  the  same  opinion;  and  he 
has,  no  doubt,  supplied  the  parallel  in  order  to  gratify 
me.  Gratifying  it  is,  in  one  sense,  to  find  oneself  con- 
firmed in  a  somewhat  novel  opinion — which,  moreover, 
was  thought  to  be  original  as  well — by  an  observer  of 
the  penetration  of  Sterne.  But  it  is  less  gratifying 


74  Readers   and    Writers 

when  one  reflects  that  Sterne  was  the  last  person  in 
the  world  to  have  the  right  to  talk  about  Love  at  all. 
What  should  a  genuine  as  well  as  a  professed  senti- 
mentalist have  to  say  of  Love  more  than  that  in  its 
practice  the  French  were  not  sentimental  enough  for 
him?  But  it  is  not  the  defect  of  sentimentality  that 
stamps  Love  as  understood  in  France  with  the  mark 
of  inferiority,  but  the  presence  of  too  much  egoism — 
a  fault  Sterne  would  never  have  observed. 

*  * 


English  Style 

The  same  correspondent  copies  out  for  me  Quincey's 
"fine  analysis  of  Swift's  style,"  as  follows: — 

The  main  qualification  for  such  a  style  was  plain  good  sense, 
natural  feeling,  unpretendingness,  some  little  scholarly  practice 
in  the  putting  together  of  sentences  so  as  to  avoid  mechanical 
awkwardness  of  construction,  but  above  all,  the  advantage  of  a 
subject  such  in  its  nature  as  instinctively  to  reject  ornament 
lest  it  should  draw  attention  from  itself.  Such  subjects  are 
common ;  but  grand  impassioned  subjects  insist  upon  a  different 
treatment ;  and  there  it  is  that  the  true  difficulties  of  style  com- 
mence, and  there  it  is  that  your  worshipful  Master  Jonathan 
would  have  broken  down  irrecoverably. 

This  "fine  analysis"  of  Swift's  style  does  not  ap- 
pear to  me  to  be  anything  more  than  a  powerful  attack 
delivered  by  an  apostle  of  the  opposing  school.  Swift 
and  de  Quincey  are  obviously  poles  apart  in  the  di- 
rection of  their  style,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  I  could 


English  Style  75 

find  in  Swift  as  severe  an  analysis  of  de  Quincey  as 
my  correspondent  has  found  in  de  Quincey  of  Swift. 
At  bottom  the  controversy  carries  us  back  to  the  very 
foundations  of  European  culture.  On  the  whole, 
Swift  followed  the  Greek  tradition — exemplified  by 
Demosthenes — while  de  Quincey  followed  the  Latin — 
exemplified  by  Cicero.  There  can  be  no  doubt  of  the 
school  to  which  Swift  belonged;  his  Drapier's  Letters, 
for  instance,  were  confessedly  modelled  on  Demosthe- 
nes. Likewise  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  school 
which  de  Quincey  attended;  he  learned  his  style  of 
Cicero.  The  question,  however,  is  one  of  taste,  by  no 
means  a  matter  of  non  est  disputandum.  Which  of 
the  two  schools  of  style  is  capable  of  the  highest  ab- 
solute development;  and,  above  all,  which  is  the  most 
suited  to  the  English  language?  My  mind  is  fully 
made  up ;  I  am  for  the  Greek  and  Demosthenes  against 
the  Latin  and  Cicero.  I  am  for  Swift  against  de  Quin- 
cey; for  the  simple  against  the  ornate. 

De  Quincey  appears  to  me  to  fall  into  an  almost 
vulgar  error  in  assuming  that  the  style  of  plain  good 
sense  cultivated  by  Swift  is  fit  only  for  commonplace 
subjects,  and  that  "grand  impassioned  subjects"  de- 
mand an  ornate  style.  The  style  of  Demosthenes  was 
obviously  quite  as  well  fitted  to  the  high  subjects  of 
his  Discourse  on  the  Crown  as  to  the  details  for  the 
fitting  out  of  an  expedition  against  Philip.  The 
Apology  of  Plato  is  in  much  the  same  style,  and  not 
even  de  Quincey  would  say  that  the  subject  was  not 
anything  but  commonplace.  With  the  majority  of 
English  critics,  I  have  a  horror  of  fine  writing,  and 


76  Readers   and   Writers 

especially  about  fine  things.  The  proper  rule  is,  in 
fact,  the  very  reverse  of  that  laid  down  by  de  Quincey; 
it  is  on  no  account  to  write  upon  "grand  impassioned 
subjects"  in  a  grand  impassioned  style.  After  all,  as 
the  Greeks  understood,  there  are  an  infinite  number 
of  degrees  of  simplicity,  ranging  from  the  simple  col- 
loquial to  the  simple  grand.  The  ornate  Latin  style, 
with  its  degrees  of  ornateness,  is,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  bastard  style.  The  conclusion  seems  to  be  this: 
that  the  simple  style  is  capable  of  anything,  even  of 
dealing  with  "grand  impassioned  subjects";  whereas 
the  ornate  style  is  only  barely  tolerable  in  the  most 
exceptional  circumstances.  I  would  sooner  trust  Swift 
than  de  Quincey  not  to  embarrass  a  reader  on  a  diffi- 
cult occasion,  as,  for  the  same  reason,  I  prefer  Shake- 
speare the  Greek  to  Ben  Johnson  the  Latinist. 


* 
*   * 


Literary  Culs-de-sac 

A  cul-de-sac  occurs  in  literary  history  when  a  di- 
rection is  taken  away  from  the  main  highway  of  the 
national  language  and  literature;  when  the  stream  it 
represents  is  not  part  of  the  main  stream  of  the  tra- 
ditional language,  but  a  back-water  or  a  side  stream. 
There  have  been  dozens  of  such  private  streams  in  the 
course  of  our  literary  history,  and  I  am  not  denying 
for  an  instant  that  their  final  contribution  to  the  main 
stream  has  been  considerable. 


The  Decline  of  Free  Intelligence     77 
The  Decline  of  Free  Intelligence 

Pure  intelligence  I  should  define  as  displaying  itself 
in  disinterested  interest  in  things;  in  things,  that  is  to 
say,  of  no  personal  advantage,  but  only  of  general, 
public,  or  universal  importance.  Interest  (to  turn  the 
can  in  the  pan)  is  the  growing  end  of  the  mind,  and 
its  direction  and  strength  are  marked  by  a  motiveless 
curiosity  to  know;  it  reveals  itself,  while  it  is  still  active, 
as  a  love  of  knowledge  for  its  own  sake.  Later  on 
it  often  appears  that  this  motiveless  love  had  a  motive; 
in  other  words,  the  knowledge  acquired  under  its  im- 
pulse is  discovered  in  the  end  to  "come  in  handy,"  and 
to  have  been  of  use.  But  the  process  of  acquiring  this 
knowledge  is  for  the  most  part,  indeliberate,  unaware 
of  any  other  aim  than  that  of  the  satisfaction  of  curi- 
osity; utility  is  remote  from  its  mind.  This  is  what 
I  have  called  disinterested  interest,  and  it  is  this  free 
intelligence  of  which  it  appears  to  me  that  there  is  a 
diminishing  amount  in  our  day.  Were  it  not  the  case, 
the  fortunes  of  the  really  free  Press  would  be  much 
brighter  than  they  are.  An  organ  of  free  opinion 
would  not  need  to  discover  a  utilitarian  attraction  for 
its  free  opinions,  but  would  be  able  to  command  a  sale 
on  its  own  merits.  Such,  indeed,  is  the  case  in  several 
European  countries,  notably  in  France,  Italy,  and  Ger- 
many. I  am  told  that  it  is  the  case  also  in  Bohemia 
(in  which  country  there  is  not  only  no  illiterate,  but 
no  un-read  adult)  and  in  the  provinces  of  Yugo  Slavia. 
In  these  countries,  a  journal  of  opinions  can  live  with- 


78  Readers   and    Writers 

out  providing  its  readers  with  any  commercial  or 
specialist  bribe  in  the  way  of  exclusive  utilitarian  in- 
formation; it  can  live,  that  is  to  say,  by  the  sale  of  its 
free  intelligence.  Happy  countries — in  one  sense  of 
the  word;  happy  if  also  tragical;  for  their  existence 
is  not  always,  at  any  rate,  a  paradise  for  the  rich,  a  hell 
for  the  poor,  and  a  purgatory  for  the  able ! 

To  what  is  due  this  decline  amongst  us  of  free  in- 
telligence? There  are  several  explanations  possible, 
though  none  is  wholly  satisfying.  It  can  be  attributed 
to  the  industrialization  of  our  own  country,  a  meta- 
morphosis of  occupation  which  has  been  longer  in  be- 
ing in  England  than  anywhere  else.  The  economic 
balance  between  primary  and  secondary  production  has 
been  for  a  longer  period  lost  in  this  country  than  else- 
where, with  the  consequence  that  we  have  been  the  first 
to  exhibit  the  effects  of  over-industrialization  in  the 
loss  of  the  free  intelligence  associated  with  primary 
production.  The  other  nations  may  be  expected  to  fol- 
low suit  as  the  same  metamorphosis  overtakes  them. 
Another  explanation  is  the  reaction  against  the  intel- 
lectualism  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  is  a  familiar 
topic,  but  it  is  obvious  that  if  faith  in  the  ultimate  use 
of  intelligence  is  lost,  men  become  cynical  in  regard  to 
the  passion  itself.  Let  us  suppose  that  every  love  af- 
fair always  and  invariably  ended  in  disappointment  or 
disaster.  Let  us  suppose  that  it  became  the  accepted 
belief  that  such  would  always  be  the  case.  Would  it 
not  soon  become  fashionable  to  nip  the  first  stirrings 
of  love  in  the  bud,  and  to  salt  its  path  whenever  its 
shoots  began  to  appear?*  The  nineteenth  century 


The  Decline  of  Free  Intelligence      79 

reached  its  climax  in  a  vast  disappointment  with  sci- 
ence, with  the  intellect,  with  intellectualism.  The 
fifth  act  of  the  thrilling  drama  inaugurated  after  the 
French  Revolution  closed  in  utter  weariness  and  ennui. 
It  was  no  wonder  that  the  twentieth  century  opened  in 
a  return  to  impulse  and  in  a  corresponding  reaction 
from  intellectuality.  That  the  reaction  has  gone  too 
far  is  the  very  disease  we  are  now  trying  to  diagnose; 
for  only  an  excessive  reaction  towards  impulse  and 
away  from  thought  can  account  for  the  poverty  of  free 
intelligence.  Sooner  or  later,  the  pendulum  must  be 
set  free  again,  if  not  in  this  country,  then  in  America, 
or  in  some  of  the  countries  whose  rebirth  we  are  now 
witnessing.  It  cannot  be  the  will  of  God  that  free 
intelligence  should  be  extinguished  from  the  planet;  the 
world,  somehow  or  other,  must  be  made  safe  for  in- 
telligence as  well  as  for  democracy. 

My  last  guess  at  the  origin  of  the  phenomenon  is  the 
decline  of  the  religious  spirit.  Religion,  I  conceive, 
is  the  study  and  practice  of  perfection,  and  it  is  summed 
up  in  the  text:  "Be  ye  perfect,  even  as  your  Father  in 
Heaven  is  perfect."  This  impossible  and  infinite  aim 
includes,  as  a  matter  of  course,  the  employment  and 
development  of  intelligence  as  one  of  the  most  power- 
ful aids  to  perfection.  Fools,  the  Indian  Scriptures 
inform  us,  can  enter  heaven,  but  only  wise  men  know 
how  to  stay  there.  And  if  the  perfection  we  seek  is 
to  be  lasting  and  incorruptible,  it  is  certain  that  an  in- 
finite amount  of  intelligence  will  be  necessary  to  its 
accomplishment.  The  loss  of  the  belief  in  the  per- 
fectibility of  the  human  spirit,  in  the  religious  duty  of 


8o  Readers   and    Writers 

perfection,  might  easily  account  for  the  diminution  of 
our  regard  for  one  of  the  chief  instruments  of  perfec- 
tion, namely,  intelligence.  Why  should  we  strive  to  set 
the  crooked  straight,  since  it  is  not  only  impossible, 
but  is  no  duty  of  ours?  And  why  labour  with  the  in- 
strumental means  when  the  end  is  of  no  value?  None 
of  these  explanations,  however,  really  satisfies  me. 

The  free  Press  is  more  severely  criticized  by  its 
readers  than  the  "kept"  Press  by  its  clientele.  The 
reason  is,  no  doubt,  that  in  comparison  with  the  "kept" 
Press  it  protests  its  freedom  and  sets  itself  up  on  a 
pedestal.  Every  "excuse"  is  consequently  denied  to 
it,  and  the  smallest  complaint  is  enlarged  to  a  grievance. 
The  "kept"  Press  may  be  caught  in  flagrant'  self-con- 
tradiction, in  lies,  in  chicanery  of  all  kinds,  in  every 
form  of  intellectual  and  other  dishonesty — it  continues 
to  be  read  and  "followed"  as  if  the  oracle  were 
infallible.  No  newspaper  in  this  country  has  ever  died 
of  exposure ;  many  live  by  being  found  out.  The  free 
Press,  on  the  other  hand,  has  often  for  its  readers  not 
only  the  most  exigent  of  critics,  but  the  most  contradic- 
tory. They  are  not  only  hard  to  please  (which  is  a 
merit) ,  but  their  reasons  for  being  pleased,  or  the  re- 
verse, are  bewilderingly  various.  And,  moreover, 
when  they  are  pleased  they  are  usually  silent,  and 
when  they  are  displeased  they  cease  to  buy  the  journal. 


* 

*  * 


Literary  Copyright  in  America      8 1 
Literary  Copyright  in  America 

Horace  Walpole  used  to  say  that  the  Americans 
were  the  only  people  by  whom  he  would  wish  to  be 
admired.  Let  me  put  the  compliment  a  little  differ- 
ently and  say  that  the  Americans  are  the  people  among 
all  others  whom  we  would  most  wish  to  admire  most. 
Having  done  so  much  to  command  our  admiration  al- 
ready, we  are  not  only  willing,  we  are  desirous  and 
anxious,  that  they  should  leave  no  amendable  fault 
unamended  in  themselves.  Our  command  to  them  is 
that  they  should  become  perfect. 

This  must  be  my  excuse  for  joining  in  the  discussion 
concerning  the  law  of  literary  copyright  in  America, 
and  the  effect  it  has  on  the  literary  relations  of  this 
country  and  America.  I  must  agree  with  Mr.  Pound 
that  the  literary  relations  of  our  two  countries  are  bad, 
and  that  much  of  this  estrangement,  if  not  all  of  it, 
is  due  to  remediable  causes  lying  at  present  on  the 
American  book  of  statutes.  The  actual  facts  of  the 
situation  are  simple.  The  copyright  laws  of  America, 
unlike  those  of  any  other  civilized  country,  with  the 
exception  of  ex-Tsarist  Russia,  require  as  a  condition 
of  extending  the  protection  of  its  copyright  to  any 
work  of  foreign  publication  that  the  latter  shall  be  set 
up,  printed,  and  published  in  America  within  a  period 
of  thirty  to  sixty  days  after  the  publication  in  the 
country  of  its  origin.  Failing  such  practically  simul- 
taneous publication  in  America,  not  only  is  an  Ameri- 
can publisher  thereafter  entitled  to  proceed  immedi- 


82  Readers   and    Writers 

ately  to  publish  the  work  in  question  without  the 
permission  of  the  author,  but  the  author  and  his 
national  publishers  are  not  entitled  to  demand  any 
royalties  or  fees  on  the  sale  of  the  same.  In  other 
words,  as  far  as  the  original  author  and  publisher  are 
concerned,  they  are  non-existent  in  America  unless  they 
have  made  arrangements  for  the  publication  of  their 
work  in  America  within  one,  or,  at  most,  two  months 
of  its  original  publication  in  their  own  country. 

Not  to  exaggerate  in  describing  such  a  procedure  it 
can  be  exactly  characterized  by  no  other  phrase  than 
looting  under  the  form  of  law.  Every  author  and 
publisher  in  this  country  knows  how  difficult  it  is  to 
arrange  for  the  simultaneous  publication  of  works  at 
home  and  in  America.  The  time-conditions  of  publi- 
cation are  seldom  the  same  in  both  countries.  A  book 
that  is  timely  in  this  country  may  not  be  simultaneously 
timely  in  America,  and  it  would  be  very  odd  if  it  al- 
ways were. 

Again,  a  couple  of  months  is  a  small  period  of  time 
in  which  to  arrange  to  have  an  English  work  dis- 
patched, accepted,  set  up,  printed,  and  published  in 
America.  Commercial  difficulties  of  all  kinds  arise  in 
the  course  of  the  transaction,  and  every  delay  brings 
the  day  of  the  accursed  shears  of  the  American  Copy- 
right Act  nearer.  Is  an  English  publisher  to  bargain 
with  the  advantage  of  time  always  on  the  side  of 
America,  with  the  certain  knowledge  that,  unless  he 
comes  to  terms  at  once,  he  will  lose  everything  both 
for  himself  and  his  author?  But  either  that  or  in- 
definitely delaying  publication  in  this  country  is  his  only 


Literary  Copyright  in  America      83 

possible  course.  The  American  Copyright  Law  is  thus 
seen  to  be  a  modern  example  of  Morton's  fork.  By 
requiring  that  the  foreign  author  shall  publish  his  work 
in  America  within  one  or  two  months  of  its  publication 
at  home,  the  law  compels  him  to  make  a  choice  (in  the 
majority  of  cases)  between  forfeiting  his  copyright  in 
America,  and  delaying,  at  his  own  cost,  the  publication 
of  his  book  in  his  own  country.  Upon  either  prong 
he  is  impaled.  If  he  elects  for  American  publication 
he  must  forgo  the  chance  of  the  immediate  market  at 
home,  and  if  he  elects  for  immediate  publication  at 
home  he  must  forgo  the  protection  of  American  copy- 
right. 

Such  an  ingenious  device  for  Dick-Turpining  Euro- 
pean authors  cannot  have  been  invented  and  enforced 
without  some  presumed  moral  justification.  America 
cannot  be  conceived  as  a  willing  party  to  the  legislation 
of  literary  piracy,  and  it  was  and  is,  no  doubt,  under 
some  cover  of  justification  that  the  law  was  enacted 
and  now  runs.  The  defence  for  it,  I  should  suppose, 
is  the  presumed  necessity  for  protecting  the  industry 
of  book-making  in  America  on  behalf  of  American 
authors,  printers,  and  publishers  alike.  Its  defence, 
in  short,  is  the  same  defence  that  is  set  up  for  protec- 
tion in  commercial  matters  in  this  country,  namely,  the 
desirability  of  excluding  foreign  competition,  and  of 
encouraging  home  industry.  Against  this  defence,  how- 
ever, there  is  a  great  deal  to  be  said  that  ought  to  weigh 
with  the  American  people,  and  that  ought  to  weigh  in 
their  calculations  as  well  as  in  their  taste  and  sense  of 
right.  For,  as  to  the  latter,  I  take  it  that  no  American 


84  Readers   and    Writers 

would  undertake  to  defend  his  Copyright  Law  on  the 
principles  either  of  good  taste  or  common  justice.  It 
cannot  be  in  conformity  with  good  taste  for  the  literary 
artists  of  America  to  procure  protection  for  them- 
selves by  penalizing  their  European  confreres,  and  it 
cannot  be  justice  to  rob  a  European  author  of  his  copy- 
rights, or  to  compel  him  to  delay  his  publication  in 
Europe.  These  admissions  I  take  for  granted,  and 
the  only  defence  left  is  the  calculation  that  such  a  Copy- 
right Act  is  good  for  the  American  book-making 
interests. 

If  books  were  like  other  commodities,  their  sale, 
like  the  sale  of  other  commodities,  would  fall  under 
the  economic  law  of  diminishing  returns.  Thereunder, 
as  their  supply  increased,  the  demand  for  books  would 
tend  to  decrease,  as  is  the  case  with  cotton,  say,  or 
wooden  spoons.  And  upon  such  an  assumption  there 
might  be  some  reason  for  prohibiting  the  free  importa- 
tion of  printed  books,  since  the  imported  articles  would 
compete  in  the  home  market  for  a  relatively  inelastic 
demand.  But  books,  it  is  obvious,  are  not  a  commodity 
in  this  sense  of  the  word.  They  do  not  satisfy  demand, 
but  stimulate  it,  and  their  sale,  therefore,  does  not  fall 
under  the  economic  law  of  diminishing  returns,  but 
under  the  very  contrary,  that  of  increasing  returns. 
Books,  there  is  no  doubt  of  it,  are  the  cause  of  books. 
New  books  do  not  take  the  place  of  old  books;  nor  do 
books  really  compete,  as  a  general  rule,  with  each 
other.  On  the  contrary,  the  more  books  there  are,  the 
more  are  demanded  and  the  more  are  produced.  The 


Literary  Copyright  in  America     85 

free  importation  of  books  is  not  a  means  of  contracting 
the  home-production  of  books;  it  is  the  very  opposite, 
the  most  effective  means  of  stimulating  home-produc- 
tion to  its  highest  possible  degree.  If  I  were  an  Ameri- 
can author,  resident  in  America,  and  concerned  for  the 
prosperity  of  the  American  book-making  profession, 
craft,  and  industry,  I  should  not  be  in  the  least  disposed 
to  thank  the  American  Copyright  Law  for  the  protec- 
tion it  professes  to  give  me.  The  appetite  for  books, 
upon  which  appetite  I  and  my  craft  live,  grows,  I  should 
say,  by  what  it  feeds  on.  Addressing  the  Copyright  Act 
as  it  now  exists,  I  should  say  to  it:  "In  discouraging  the 
free  importation  of  foreign  books,  and  in  alienating 
the  goodwill  of  foreign  authors  and  publishers,  you  are 
robbing  foreign  authors  (that  is  true),  but,  much 
worse,  you  are  depriving  my  public  of  the  stimulus 
necessary  to  its  demand  for  my  books.  Since  we 
authors  in  America  have  a  vital  interest  in  increasing 
literary  demand,  and  the  more  books  the  more  demand 
is  created,  our  real  protection  lies  in  freely  importing 
books,  and  not  in  placing  any  impediment  in  their  way. 
Intending  to  help  us,  you — the  Copyright  Law — are 
really  our  enemy."  I  cannot  see  what  reply  the  Copy- 
right Law  could  make  to  this  attack  upon  it  by  its  pro- 
teges, and  I  believe,  moreover,  that  if  they  were  to 
make  it,  the  Law  would  soon  be  amended. 


* 
*  * 


86  Readers   and    Writers 

Right  Criticism 

To  abandon  the  aim  of  "finality"  of  judgment  is 
to  let  in  the  jungle  into  the  cultivated  world  of  art; 
it  is  to  invite  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry  to  offer  their 
opinions  as  of  equal  value  with  the  opinions  of  the 
cultivated.  It  is  no  escape  from  this  conclusion  to  in- 
quire into  the  "mentality"  of  the  critic  and  to  attach 
importance  to  his  judgment,  as  his  mentality  is  or  is 
not  interesting.  In  appraising  a  judgment  I  am  not 
concerned  with  the  mentality,  interesting  or  otherwise, 
of  the  judge  who  delivers  it.  My  concern  is  not  with 
him,  but  with  the  work  before  us;  nor  is  the  remark 
to  be  made  upon  his  verdict  the  personal  comment, 
"How  interesting!"  but  the  critical  comment,  "How 
true!"  or  "How  false!"  Personal  preferences  turn 
the  attention  in  the  nature  of  the  case  from  the  object 
criticized  to  the  critic  himself.  The  method  substitutes 
for  the  crticism  of  art  the  criticism  of  psychology.  In 
a  word,  it  is  not  art  criticism  at  all. 

It  may  be  said  that  if  we  dismiss  personal  preference 
as  a  criticism  of  art  judgment,  there  is  either  nothing 
left  or  only  some  "scientific"  standard  which  has  no 
relevance  to  aesthetics.  It  is  the  common  plea  of  the 
idiosyncrats  that,  inconclusive  as  their  opinions  must 
be,  and  anything  but  universally  valid,  no  other  method 
within  the  world  of  art  is  possible.  I  dissent.  A 
"final"  judgment  is  as  possible  of  a  work  of  art  as  of 
any  other  manifestation  of  the  spirit  of  man;  there  is 
nothing  in  the  nature  of  things  to  prevent  men 


Right  Criticism  87 

arriving  at  a  universally  valid  (that  is,  universally  ac- 
cepted) judgment  of  a  book,  a  picture,  a  sonata,  a 
statue,  or  a  building  any  more  than  there  is  to  prevent 
a  legal  judge  from  arriving  at  a  right  judgment  con- 
cerning any  other  human  act;  and,  what  is  more,  such 
judgments  of  art  are  not  only  made  daily,  but  in  the  end 
they  actually  prevail  and  constitute  in  their  totality 
the  tradition  of  art.  The  test  is  not  scientific,  but 
as  little  is  it  merely  personal.  Its  essential  character 
is  simply  that  it  is  right;  right  however  arrived  at,  and 
right  whoever  arrives  at  it.  That  the  judge  in  ques- 
tion may  or  may  not  have  "studied"  the  history  of  the 
art-work  he  is  judging  is  a  matter  of  indifference. 
Neither  his  learning  nor  his  natural  ignorance  is  of  any 
importance.  That  he  is  or  .is  not  notoriously  this, 
that,  or  the  other,  is  likewise  no  concern.  All  that 
matters  is  that  his  judgment,  when  delivered,  should 
be  "right."  But  who  is  to  settle  this,  it  may  be  asked? 
Who  is  to  confirm  a  right  judgment  or  to  dispute  a 
wrong  one?  The  answer  is  contained  in  the  true  in- 
terpretation of  the  misunderstood,  saying,  De  gustibus 
non  est  disputandum.  The  proof  of  right  taste  is  that 
there  is  no  real  dispute  about  its  judgment;  its  finality 
is  evidenced  by  the  cessation  of  debate.  The  truth 
may  be  simply  stated;  a  judge — that  is  to  say,  a  true 
judge — is  he  with  whom  everybody  is  compelled  to 
agree,  not  because  he  says  it,  but  because  it  is  so. 


* 


88  Readers  and  Writers 

Man's  Survival  of  Bodily  Death 

What  the  circulation  of  the  Quest  is  I  have  no  idea, 
but  it  should  be  ten  times  greater.  Is  there,  however, 
a  sufficiently  large  class  of  cultured  persons  in  Eng- 
land— in  the  Empire — in  the  world?  Assuming  that 
the  spread  of  culture  can  be  reckoned  numerically  as 
well  as  qualitatively,  can  we  pride  ourselves  on  the 
extension  of  culture  while  the  number  of  free  intelli- 
gences is  relatively  decreasing?  But  how  does  one 
know  that  this  class  is  really  on  the  decrease?  Only 
by  the  same  means  that  we  judge  the  number  of  the 
curious  lepidoptera  in  any  area — by  holding  a  light  up 
in  the  dark  and  counting  the  hosts  attracted  by  it.  In 
the  case  of  the  Quest  there  is  no  doubt  whatever  that 
a  light  is  being  held  up  in  our  darkness.  Its  articles 
are  upon  the  most  exalted  topics;  they  are,  for  the  most 
part,  luminously  written,  and  their  purity  of  motive 
may  be  taken  for  granted.  The  Quest  is  the  literary 
Platonic  Academy  of  our  day.  Yet  it  is  seldom  spoken 
of  in  literary  circles.  We  "good"  are  very  apathetic, 
and  it  is  lucky  for  the  devil  that  his  disciples  are  un- 
like us  in  this  respect.  They  see  to  it  that  every- 
thing evil  shall  flourish  like  the  bay-tree,  while  we  al- 
low the  bays  of  the  intelligent  to  fade  into  the  sere. 

Mr.  Mead  contributed  an  article  on  a  topic  which 
has  not  yet  been  exhausted,  "Man's  Survival  of  Bodily 
Death."  Mr.  Randall  is  not  the  first  to  deny  "immor- 
tality" while  affirming  an  absolute  morality,  nor  even 
the  first  to  attempt  to  explain  religion  without  recourse 


Mans  Survival  of  Bodily  Death     89 

to  a  dogma  of  survival.  The  Sadducees  did  it  before 
him;  and  the  Confucians  managed  somehow  or  other 
to  combine  ancestor-worship  with  a  lively  denial  of 
their  continued  existence.  There  is,  moreover,  an 
ethical  value  in  the  denial  which  almost  makes  the 
denial  of  survival  an  act  of  moral  heroism.  For  if  a 
man  can  pursue  the  highest  moral  aims  without  the 
smallest  hope  of  personal  reward,  hereafter,  and,  still 
less,  here,  his  disinterestedness  is  obvious;  he  pursues 
virtue  as  the  pupil  is  enjoined  in  the  Bhagavad  Gita  to 
act,  namely,  without  hope  or  fear  of  fruit.  I  am  not 
of  the  heroic  breed  myself,  and,  in  any  case,  the  prob- 
lem is  one  of  fact  as  well  as  of  moral  discipline.  It 
may  be  heroic  to  put  the  telescope  of  truth  to  a  delib- 
erately blinded  eye,  but  unless  you  suspect  yourself  of 
being  unable  to  master  the  fact,  I  see  no  indispensable 
virtue  in  its  wilful  denial.  At  all  risks  to  my  morality 
I  should  prefer  to  keep  my  weather-eye  open  for  such 
evidences  of  survival  as  may  loom  up  behind  the  fog. 

Premising  that  "no  high  religion  can  exist  which  is 
not  based  on  faith  in  survival,"  Mr.  Mead  proceeds  to 
examine  the  two  forms  of  inquiry  which  conceivably 
promise  conclusions:  the  comparative  study  of  the 
mystic  philosophers  and  their  recorded  religious  ex- 
periences in  all  ages,  and  the  more  material  examination 
of  the  spiritualistic  phenomena  of  modern  psychical 
research.  For  himself,  Mr.  Mead  has  chosen  the 
former  method,  and  I  am  interested  to  observe  his  tes- 
timony, in  a  rare  personal  statement,  to  the  satisfaction, 
more  or  less,  that  is  possible  from  following  this  road. 
At  the  same  time,  though  without  any  experience  in 


90  Readers  and  Writers 

the  second  method,  Mr.  Mead  is  explicitly  of  the 
opinion  that  it  is  one  that  should  be  employed  by  sci- 
ence with  increasing  earnestness.  The  difficulties  are 
tremendous,  and  as  subtle  as  they  are  considerable. 
Before  survival  can  be  scientifically  demonstrated,  a 
host  of  working  hypotheses  must  be  invented  and 
discredited,  and  the  utmost  veracity  will  be  necessary 
in  the  students.  With  such  facts  before  us  as  telepathy, 
dissociated  personality,  subconscious  complexes,  auto- 
suggestion and  suggestion,  the  phenomena  that  super- 
ficially point  to  survival  may  plainly  be  nothing  of  the 
kind.  Survival,  in  short,  must  be  expected  to  be  about 
the  latest  rather  than  the  first  psychic  fact  to  be  scien- 
tifically established.  The  student  must,  therefore,  be 
exigent  as  well  as  hopeful. 

There  is  a  third  method  from  which  we  may  hope 
to  hear  one  day  something  to  our  advantage — assuming 
that  the  certain  knowledge  of  survival  would  be  to 
mankind's  advantage — the  method  of  psycho-analysis. 
If  psycho-analysis  of  the  first  degree  can  make  us  ac- 
quainted with  the  subconscious,  why  should  not  a  psy- 
cho-analysis of  the  second  degree  make  us  acquainted 
with  the  super-conscious;  and  as  the  language  of  the 
subconscious  may  be  sleeping  dreams,  the  language  of 
the  super-conscious  may  be  waking  visions.  To  re- 
turn to  Mr.  Mead's  article,  an  interesting  account  is 
contained  in  it  of  a  recent  census  taken  in  America  by 
Professor  Leuba  of  the  creeds  of  more  or  less  eminent 
men.  The  returns  for  the  article  of  faith  in  survival 
and  immortality  are  curious,  not  to  say  surprising.  Of 
the  eminent  physicists  canvassed,  40  per  cent,  confessed 


Beardsley  and  Arthur  Symons       91 

their  belief  in  man's  survival  of  bodily  death.  There- 
after the  percentage  falls  through  the  stages  of  his- 
torians 35  per  cent.,  and  sociologists  27  per  cent.,  to 
psychologists  with  the  degraded  percentage  of  9.  It 
is  a  strange  reversal  of  the  procession  that  might  have 
been  anticipated,  and  it  expresses,  perhaps,  the  condi- 
tion of  real  culture  in  America.  For  that  the  physicists 
should  be  the  most  hopeful  class  of  scientists  in 
America,  and  the  psychologists  the  most  hopeless  is 
an  indication  that  the  best  brains  in  America  are  still 
engaged  in  physical  problems.  The  poor  psycholo- 
gists are  scarcely  even  hopeful  of  discovering  anything. 


* 

*  * 


Beardsley  and  Arthur  Symons 

"Unbounded"  admiration  is  precisely  what  I  can- 
not feel  for  Aubrey  Beardsley's  work,  even  "within 
its  own  sphere."  I  ought  to  say,  perhaps,  "because 
of  its  sphere."  Pure  aesthetic  is  a  matter  for  contem- 
plation only,  and  we  should  be  prepared  upon  occasion 
to  suspend  every  other  kind  of  judgment.  Or,  would 
it  not  be  true  to  say  that  the  pure  aesthetic  does  itself 
suspend  in  the  beholder  every  other  form  of  judgment 
or  reaction — such  as  the  moral,  the  intellectual,  and 
the  practical?  A  great  tragedy,  for  instance,  is  a 
kind  of  focus  of  the  whole  nature  of  man;  every  fac- 
ulty is  engaged  in  it,  and  all  are  lifted  up  and  trans- 
figured into  the  pure  aesthetic  of  contemplation.  But 
one  is  not  aware,  in  that  case,  of  moral  or  other  reser- 


92  Readers  and  Writers 

vations;  one  has  not  to  apologize  for  the  experience 
by  pretending  that  the  "essentially  repulsive  and  dia- 
bolic decadence"  contained  in  the  tragedy  is  merely 
an  expression  of  the  age.  Beardsley  is  only  "some- 
thing of  a  genius"  precisely  because  he  failed  to  trans- 
figure the  moral  and  other  reactions  of  the  spectator 
of  his  work.  He  did  not  occupy  the  whole  of  one's 
mind.  All  the  while  that  one's  aesthetic  sense  was 
being  led  captive  by  his  art,  several  other  of  one's 
senses  were  in  rebellion.  His  command  (his  genius, 
in  short)  was  not  "absolute,"  but  only  a  quite  limited 
monarchy.  This  is  not  to  deny  that  he  was  an  artist; 
it  is  to  deny  only  that  he  was  one  of  the  greatest  of 
artists.  Other  artists  owe  him  a  greater  debt  than  the 
world  at  large.  He  was  a  great  art-master,  but  not 
a  master  of  art.  The  doctrine  of  Mr.  Arthur  Symons 
is  dangerous.  Juggling  with  the  terms  good  and  evil 
is  always  dangerous,  since  in  a  prestidigital  exhibition 
of  them,  one  can  so  easily  be  made  to  look  like  the 
other.  Demon  est  Deus  inversus.  The  paradoxical 
truth  about  the  matter,  however,  is  that  evil  is  good 
only  so  long  as  it  is  regarded  as  evil.  The  moment 
it  is  thought  of  as  good  it  is  nothing  but  evil.  Mr. 
Arthur  Symons  has  confused  in  his  mind  the  problem 
of  good  and  evil  with  the  quite  alien  problem  of  quan- 
tity of  energy. 


*   * 


"Candle  of  Fision"  93 

"y£'s"     "Candle  of  Vision" 

"JE's"  Candle  of  Vision  is  not  a  book  for  everybody, 
yet  I  wish  that  everybody  might  read  it.  Rarely  and 
more  rarely  does  any  artist  or  poet  interest  himself 
in  the  processes  of  his  mental  and  spiritual  life,  with 
the  consequence,  so  often  deplored  by  Mr.  Penty,  that 
books  on  aesthetics,  philosophy,  and,  above  all,  psy- 
chology, are  left  to  be  written  by  men  who  have  no 
immediate  experiences  of  what  they  are  writing  of. 
"vE's"  narrative  and  criticism  of  his  personal  ex- 
periences may  be  said  to  take  the  form  of  intimate 
confessions  made  pour  encourager  les  autres.  For, 
happily  for  us,  he  is  an  artist  who  is  also  a  philosopher, 
a  visionary  who  is  also  an  "intellectual" ;  and,  being 
interested  in  both  phases  of  his  personality,  he  has  had 
the  impulse  and  the  courage  to  express  both.  What 
the  ordinary  mind — the  mind  corrupted  by  false  edu- 
cation— would  say  to  "JE's"  affirmations  concerning 
his  psychological  experiences,  it  would  not  be  difficult 
to  forecast.  What  is  not  invention,  it  would  be  said, 
is  moonshine,  and  what  is  neither  is  a  pose  to  be  ex- 
plained on  some  alienist  hypothesis.  Only  readers 
who  can  recall  some  experience  similar  to  those  de- 
scribed by  "IE"  will  find  themselves  able  to  accept  the 
work  for  what  it  is — a  statement  of  uncommon  fact; 
and  only  those  who  have  developed  their  intuition  to 
some  degree  will  be  able  to  appreciate  the  spirit  of 
truth  in  which  the  Candle  of  Vision  is  written.  A  re- 
view of  such  work  is  not  to  be  undertaken  by  me,  but 
I  have  made  a  few  notes  on  some  passages. 


94  Readers  and  Writers 

Page  2.  "I  could  not  so  desire  what  was  not  my 
own,  and  what  is  our  own  we  cannot  lose  .  .  .  Desire 
is  hidden  identity."  This  is  a  characteristic  doctrine 
of  mysticism,  and  recurs  invariably  in  all  the  confes- 
sions. Such  unanimity  is  an  evidence  of  the  truth  of 
the  doctrine,  since  it  is  scarcely  to  be  supposed  that  the 
mystics  borrow  from  one  another.  But  the  doctrine, 
nevertheless,  is  difficult  for  the  mere  mind  to  accept, 
for  it  involves  the  belief  that  nothing  happens  to  us 
that  is  not  ourselves.  Character  in  that  event  is  des- 
tiny— to  quote  a  variant  of  "^E's"  sentence;  and  our 
lives  are  thus  merely  the  dramatization  of  our  given 
psychology.  Without  presuming  to  question  the  doc- 
trine, I  feel  a  reserve  concerning  its  absoluteness.  Fate 
appears  to  me  to  be  above  destiny  in  the  same  sense 
that  the  old  lady  conceived  that  there  was  One  above 
that  would  see  that  Providence  did  not  go  too  far. 
To  the  extent  that  character  is  destiny  or,  as  "IE"  says, 
desire  is  hidden  identity,  a  correct  psychological  fore- 
cast would  be  at  the  same  time  a  correct  temporal  fore- 
cast. And  while  this  may  be  true,  in  the  abstract  and 
under,  so  to  say,  ideal  conditions,  I  cannot  yet  agree 
that  everything  that  happens  to  the  individual  is  within 
his  character.  The  unforeseeable,  the  margin  of  what 
we  call  Chance,  allows  for  events  that  belong  to  Fate 
rather  than  to  Destiny. 

Page  3-  "j3i"  says  he  "was  not  conscious  in  boy- 
hood (up  to  the  age  of  sixteen  or  seventeen}  of  any 
heaven  lying  about  me."  "Childhood,"  he  thinks,  is 
no  nearer  the  "eternally  young"  than  age  may  be. 


"Candle  of  Vision'  95 

Certainly  it  appears  to  be  so  in  the  case  of  "IE"  him- 
self, for  the  intimations  of  immortality  which  Words- 
worth (and  the  world  in  general)  attributed  to  children 
were  only  begun  to  be  experienced  by  "^E"  after  his 
sixteenth  or  seventeenth  year.  From  that  time  on- 
wards, as  this  book  testifies,  he  has  been  growing 
younger  in  precisely  those  characteristics.  There  is 
a  good  deal  to  be  thought,  if  not  said,  on  this  subject. 
Children  are,  I  conceive,  rather  symbols  of  youth  than 
youth  itself;  they  are  unconsciously  young.  Age,  on 
the  other  hand,  has  the  power  of  converting  the  sym- 
bol into  the  reality,  and  of  being  young  and  knowing 
it.  Unless  ye  become,  not  little  children,  but  as  little 
children,  ye  shall  in  no  wise  enter  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven.  At  the  same  time  it  is  comparatively  rare 
for  the  ordinary  child,  that  "JE"  says  he  was,  to  de- 
velop childlikeness  in  later  life.  Usually  a-  return 
occurs  to  a  state  unconsciously  experienced  in  early 
youth.  But  there  appear  to  be  strata  of  character- 
istics in  every  mind,  and  life  is  their  successive  revela- 
tion. Without  knowing  anything  of  the  facts,  I 
surmise  that  "JE's"  heredity  was  mixed,  and  that  the 
first  layer  or  stratum  to  appear  was  that  of  some 
possibly  Lowland  Scot  ancestry.  When  that  was 
worked  through,  by  the  age  of  sixteen,  another  layer 
came  to  the  surface,  whereupon  "IE"  entered  on 
another  phase  of  "desire." 

Page  7.  "We  may  have  a  personal  wisdom,  but 
spiritual  wisdom  is  not  to  speak  of  as  ours."  This 
illustrates  another  characteristic  of  the  mystic  that 


96  Readers  and  Writers 

while  his  experiences  are  personal,  the  wisdom  revealed 
in  them  is  always  attributed  to  "Him  that  taught  me" 
— in  other  words,  to  something  not  ourselves.  An 
egoist  mysticism  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  Not  only 
no  man  is  entitled  to  claim  originality  for  a  spiritual 
truth,  but  no  man  can.  The  truth  is  no  longer  true 
when  it  has  a  name  to  it.  "Truth  bears  no  man's 
name"  is  an  axiom  of  mysticism.  The  reason,  I  pre- 
sume, is  that  the  very  condition  of  the  appreciation  of 
a  spiritual  truth  is  the  absence  of  the  sense  of  egoism. 
Such  truths  are  simply  not  revealed  to  the  egoistic  con- 
sciousness, and  therefore  cannot  appear  as  the  product 
of  human  wisdom.  Their  character  is  that  of  a  revela- 
tion from  without  rather  than  that  of  a  discovery  from 
within,  and  the  report  of  the  matter  is  thus  objective 
rather  than  subjective. 

Page  1 6.  "/  could  prophesy  from  the  uprising  of 
new  moods  in  myself  that  without  search  I  should  soon 
meet  people  of  a  certain  character,  and  so  I  met  them. 
.  .  .  7  accepted  what  befell  with  resignation.  .  .  . 
What  we  are  alone  has  power.  .  .  .  No  destiny  other 
than  we  make  for  ourselves"  I  have  already  ex- 
pressed my  doubts  whether  this  is  the  whole  truth.  It 
is,  of  course,  the  familiar  doctrine  of  Karma;  but  I  do 
not  think  it  can  be  interpreted  quite  literally.  There 
is  what  is  called  the  Love  of  God,  as  well  as  the  Justice 
of  God,  and  I  would  venture  to  add,  with  Blake,  the 
Wrath  of  God.  Judgment  is  something  more  than 
simple  justice ;  it  implies  the  consent  of  the  whole  of  the 
judging  nature,  and  not  of  its  sense  of  justice  only. 


"Candle  of  Vision'  97 

Love  enters  into  it,  and  so,  perhaps,  do  many  other 
qualities  not  usually  attributed  to  the  Supreme  Judge. 
In  interpreting  such  doctrines  we  must  allow  for  the 
personal  equation  even  of  the  highest  personality  we 
can  conceive. 

Page  19.  "None  needs  special  gifts  of  genius" 
"^E's"  Candle  of  Fision  is  confessedly  propagandist. 
It  aims  deliberately  at  encouraging  age  to  discover 
eternal  youth,  and  to  lay  hold  of  everlasting  life.  It 
is  to  this  end  that  "yE"  describes  his  own  experiences, 
and  offers  to  his  readers  the  means  of  their  verification. 
He  is  quite  explicit  that  no  "special  gifts"  or  "genius" 
are  necessary.  "This  do  and  ye  shall  find  even  as  I 
have  found."  The  special  gift  of  genius  does  not,  I 
agree,  lie  in  the  nature  of  fact  of  the  experience 
(though  here,  again,  favour  seems  sometimes  to  be 
shown) ,  but  it  does,  I  think,  lie  in  the  bent  towards  the 
effort  involved.  Anybody,  it  is  true,  may  by  the  appro- 
priate means,  experience  the  same  results,  but  nat  every- 
body has  the  "desire"  to  employ  them.  Desire, 
moreover,  is  susceptible  of  many  degrees  of  strength. 
Like  other  psychological  characteristics,  it  appears  to 
peel  off  like  the  skins  of  Peer  Gynt's  onion.  What  is  it 
that  I  really  desire?  Ask  me  today,  and  I  shall 
answer  one  thing.  Ask  me  next  year,  and  it  may  be 
another.  Years  hence  it  may  have  changed  again. 
But  desire,  in  the  mystical  sense,  is  the  desire  that  is 
left  when  all  the  transient  wishes  or  fancies  have  either 
vanished  or  been  satisfied.  Only  such  a  desire  leads 
the  student  to  make  the  effort  required  by  "IE"  and 


98  Readers  and  Writers 

the  possession  of  such  a  desire  is  something  like  a 
"special  gift"  or  "genius." 

Page  20.  "Our  religions  make  promises  to  be  ful- 
filled beyond  the  grave,  because  they  have  no  knowl- 
edge now  to  be  -put  to  the  test.  .  .  .  Mistrust  the 
religion  that  does  not  cry  out:  'Test  me  that  we  can 
become  as  gods?  '  This  is  an  excellent  observation, 
and  accounts,  to  my  mind,  for  all  the  so-called  scepti- 
cism of  modern  times.  It  is  usual  to  attribute  to  our 
predecessors,  the  most  remote  as  well  as  the  more  re- 
cent, a  quality  of  "faith"  superior  to  our  own.  They 
are  said  to  have  been  more  religious  than  we  are.  I 
do  not  believe  it;  or,  rather,  I  believe  that  they  were 
religious  because  they  had  very  good  reason  to  be ;  in 
other  words,  they  were  not  only  told  the  mysteries,  but 
they  were  shown  them.  Either  they  or  their  priests, 
had  the  "open  vision."  Is  it  conceivable  that  the 
primitive  peoples  had  the  confidence-trick  played  on 
them?  Or,  again,  is  it  the  fact  that  credulity  is  less 
today  than  before?  I  feel  sure  that  if  our  ancestors 
were  brought  to  belief,  it  was  by  means  which  would 
equally  carry  conviction  to  the  present  generation.  To 
repeat  myself :  They  believed  because  they  were  shown. 
"^E"  suggests  that  the  after-life  promises  of  modern 
religion  are  a  substitute  for  an  evasion  of  present 
demonstration.  Religions,  that  is  to  say,  concentrate 
upon  the  invisible  because  their  power  over  the  visible 
is  gone.  It  is  not  the  fact,  however,  that  the  earlier 
religions  ignored  the  after-death  adventures  of  the 
soul;  they  were  quite  as  much  concerned  with  the  life 


"Candle  of  Vision'  99 

beyond  the  grave  as  our  own  religions.  What  they 
did,  and  what  our  religions  fail  to  do,  was  to  give 
present  guarantees  for  their  future  promises.  Their 
priests  could  procure  belief  in  the  after-life  on  the 
strength  of  their  demonstrated  power  over  this  life. 
It  is  probable,  indeed,  that  many  of  the  elect  ex- 
perienced "death"  before  it  occurred  physically.  The 
Egyptian  mysteries  were  a  kind  of  experimental  death. 

Page  21.  Here  and  on  the  neighbouring  pages 
"JE"  expounds  his  method  of  meditation — the  means 
by  which  any  "ordinary"  person  may  acquire  spiritual 
experience.  "^E's"  method  follows  the  familiar  line 
of  the  mystic  schools,  namely,  "unwavering  concentra- 
tion on  some  mental  object."  "Five  minutes  of  this 
effort,"  "j?i"  says,  "will  at  first  leave  us  trembling  as 
at  the  end  of  a  laborious  day."  I  can  testify  that  this 
is  no  exaggeration,  for,  like  "^E,"  I  have  practised 
meditation  after  the  methods  prescribed.  It  is  no  easy 
job,  and  after  months  of  regular  practice  I  was  still 
an  amateur  at  the  simplest  exercises.  There  is  no 
doubt,  however,  about  the  benefit  of  it.  Much  is 
learned  .in  meditation  that  cannot  be  realized  by  any 
other  mental  exercise.  The  mind  becomes  a  real  or- 
gan, as  distinct  from  the  personality  as  a  physical  limb. 
And  gradually  one  learns  to  acquire  sufficient  control 
over  it,  if  not  to  use  it  like  a  master,  at  any  rate,  to 
realize  that  it  can  be  so  used.  I  have  not  the  smallest 
doubt  that  one  day  men  will  be  able  to  "use"  their 
minds,  and  thus  to  cease  to  be  "used"  by  them;  for  it 
is  obvious  that  at  present  we  are  victims  rather  than 


loo  Readers  and  Writers 

masters  of  our  mind.  Meditation,  as  a  means  of  mind- 
control,  is  the  appointed  method,  and  "./E's"  personal 
experience  should  encourage  his  readers  to  take  up 
the  discipline. 

Page  41.  In  regard  to  "visions,"  they  are  usually 
dismissed  by  the  commonalty  as  products  of  imagina- 
tion, "as  if,"  says  "M"  "imagination  were  as  easily 
explained  as  a  problem  in  Euclid."  This  habit  of  re- 
ferring one  mystery  to  another,  as  if  this  latter  were 
no  mystery,  is  very  common;  and  it  arises,  no  doubt, 
from  intellectual  apathy.  We  cannot  be  bothered  to 
reduce  mysteries  to  knowledge,  and,  moreover,  the 
realization  that  literally  everything  is  a  mystery,  that 
we  simply  live  in  mystery,  is  a  little  disconcerting. 
Hence  our  preference  for  assuming  some  things,  at  any 
rate,  to  be  below  the  need  of  explanation.  Imagina- 
tion, however,  provides  us  with  no  escape  from  the 
mysteries  of  vision,  any  more  than  matter  provides  us 
with  an  escape  from  the  problems  of  spirit.  "yE" 
raises  some  difficult,  and,  probably,  insoluble  prob- 
lems concerning  imagination  itself.  What  is  it  in  us 
that  imagines?  How  does  it  cast  thoughts  into 
form?  Even  allowing  (which  we  cannot)  that 
imagination  is  only  the  re-fashioning  of  memory,  what 
re-fashions  and  transforms  out  of  their  original 
resemblance  the  memories  of  things  seen?  "^E"  has 
had  many  visions,  some  of  which,  no  doubt,  he  could 
trace  to  recollected  impressions;  but,  leaving  aside 
once  more  the  difficulty  involved  in  this  reconstruction, 
what  of  the  visions  that  had,  or  appeared  to  have, 


"Candle  of  Vision'  101 

no  earthly  progenitors?  "^E's"  conclusion  appears 
to  be  indisputable,  that  "we  swim  in  an  sether  of 
deity" — for  "in  Him  we  live  and  move  and  have  our 
being." 

Passim.  Is  it  possible  that  telepathy  occurs  be- 
tween people  having  the  same  mental  "wave-length"? 
Coincidences  (another  Mesopotamian  word,  by  the 
way)  are  too  frequent  to  be  accountable  on  any  other 
supposition  than  that  of  an  established  communication. 
Like  many  another,  I  could  give  some  remarkable  in- 
stances of  telepathy,  but  they  would  be  tedious  to 
relate.  Mental  training,  however,  is  certainly  a 
means  to  this  end;  for  in  proportion  as  the  mind  is 
brought  under  control,  its  susceptibility  to  thoughts 
from  outside  palpably  increases.  The  experience  of 
the  Old  Testament  prophet  who  knew  the  plans  of 
the  enemy  before  they  were  uttered,  is  not  unique, 
even  in  these  days.  It  will  be  far  less  uncommon  in 
the  days  to  come. 

Page  54.  "/5  there  a  centra  within  us  through 
which  all  the  threads  of  the  universe  are  drawn?" 
An  ingenious  image  for  a  re-current  doctrine  of  mys- 
ticism, the  doctrine,  namely,  that  everything  is  every- 
where. One  of  the  earliest  discoveries  made  in  med- 
itation is  the  magnitude  of  the  infinitesimal.  The 
tiniest  point  of  space  appears  to  have  room  enough 
for  a  world  of  images;  and  the  mediaeval  discussion 
concerning  the  number  of  angels  that  could  dance  on 
the  point  of  a  needle  was  by  no  means  ridiculous.  If  I 
am  not  mistaken,  "^E's"  problem  is  identical  with  it. 


IO2  Readers  and  Writers 

Page  89.  The  Architecture  of  Dreams.  In  this 
chapter  "IE"  sets  himself  to  casting  some  doubts 
(shall  we  say?)  on  the  sufficiency  of  the  Freudian 
theory  of  dreams.  Dreams,  according  to  Freud,  are 
the  dramatization  of  suppressed  desires;  but  what, 
asks  "IE,"  "is  the  means  by  which  desires,  suppressed 
or  otherwise,  dramatize  themselves?"  "A  mood  or 
desire  may  attract  its  affinities" ;  in  other  words,  there 
may  be  a  congruity  between  the  desire  and  the  dream 
which  serves  the  Freudian  purpose  of  interpretation; 
but  desire  can  hardly  be  said  "to  create  what  it  at- 
tracts." Between  anger,  for  instance,  and  a  definite 
vision  of  conflict,  such  as  the  dream  may  represent, 
there  is  a  gulf  which  the  theory  of  Freud  does  not 
enable  us  to  cross.  What,  in  fact,  are  dreams?  Who 
or  what  carries  out  the  dramatization?  Assuming, 
with  Freud,  that  their  impulse  is  a  desire,  what  power 
shapes  this  desire  into  the  dream-cartoon?  "JE" 
throws  no  light  on  the  mystery,  but,  at  any  rate,  he 
does  not  dismiss  it  as  no  mystery  at  all.  Its  philo- 
sophical discussion  is  to  be  found  in  the  Indian  phi- 
losophy known  as  the  Sankhya. 

Page  89.  "The  process  must  be  conscious  on  some 
plane" — the  dramatization,  that  is  to  say,  must  be  the 
conscious  work  of  some  intelligent  agent  or  quality. 
I  am  a  little  doubtful  of  this,  for  reasons  to  be  dis- 
covered in  the  Sankhya  philosophy  just  referred  to. 
Is  the  pattern  taken  by  sand  on  a  shaken  plate  a 
"conscious"  design?  Are  frost-flowers  the  work  of 
intelligence?  Forms,  according  to  the  Sankhya,  are 


"Candle  of  Vision'  103 

the  reflection  in  matter  (Prakriti)  of  the  activities  of 
the  spirit  (Purusha)  ;  they  are  consciousness  visible. 
But  it  would  not  follow  that  they  are  themselves  con- 
scious or  that  their  creation  is  a  "conscious"  process. 

Page  90.  "Have  imaginations  body?"  In  other 
words,  are  the  figures  seen  in  dream  and  vision  three- 
dimensional?  "IE"  describes  several  incidents  within 
his  experience  that  certainly  seem  to  suggest  an  ob- 
jective reality  in  dream-figures,  and  the  occasional  pro- 
jection of  dream-figures  into  phantasms  is  a  further 
evidence  of  it.  But,  once  again,  I  would  refer  "IE" 
to  the  Sankhya  aphorisms,  and  to  Kapila's  commen- 
tary on  them.  The  question  is  really  of  the  general 
order  of  the  relation  of  form  to  thought. 

Page  114.  Here,  and  in  the  succeeding  essay, 
"IE"  develops  his  intuitional  thesis  that  sound  and 
thought  have  definite  affinities.  For  every  thought 
there  is  a  sound,  and  every  sound  is  at  the  same  time 
a  thought.  The  idea  is,  of  course,  familiar,  and, 
like  many  more  in  the  Candle  of  Vision,  is  found  re- 
curring like  a  decimal  throughout  mystical  and  occult 
literature  in  all  ages.  The  most  ancient  occult  litera- 
ture— dispute  whether  that  of  India  or  Egypt — is 
most  precise  on  the  subject,  the  general  proposition 
being  therein  reduced  to  a  series  of  equivalents  in 
which  form,  sound,  colour,  thought,  emotion,  and 
number,  all  seem  to  be  interchangeable.  Each  of 
these,  in  fact,  is  said  to  be  a  language — a  complete  lan- 
guage ;  and  to  the  initiate  it  is  a  matter  of  indifference 


IO4  Readers  and  Writers 

whether  the  text  before  him  is  "written"  in  form,  in 
colour,  in  number,  or  sound.  Unfortunately,  neither 
U^E"  nor  anybody  within  our  knowledge,  is  able  to 
procure  even  the  skeleton  key  to  the  mystery.  The 
records  are  so  perversely  confused  that  I  cannot  be- 
lieve that  their  authors  were  not  deliberately  playing 
a  game  with  us.  It  would  be  rather  like  the  old  initi- 
ates to  "dis"  their  type  before  leaving  it  to  be 
examined  by  the  barbarian  invaders;  and  certainly 
nobody  of  ordinary  faculty  can  begin  to  make  head 
or  tail  of  the  "correspondences"  recorded  in  the  In- 
dian scriptures.  It  is  the  same,  strangely  enough, 
with  Plato,  whose  Cratylus  deals  with  the  relation  of 
verbal  language  to  mental  conception.  A  master  of 
simple  exposition,  he  becomes  in  the  Cratylus,  whether 
from  design  or  feebleness  of  understanding,  as  cryp- 
tic as  the  Indians  themselves.  I  have  read  the 
Cratylus  all  ways,  with  no  better  result  than  to  feel 
that  I  have  wasted  my  time.  "^E"  has  approached 
the  problem,  however,  experimentally,  with  the  aid  of 
his  intuition.  If,  he  said  to  himself,  there  is  really 
a  definite  correspondence  between  sound  and  idea, 
meditation  on  one  or  the  other  should  be  able  to 
discover  it.  In  other  words,  he  has  attempted  to  re- 
discover the  lost  language,  and  to  find  for  himself 
the  key  whose  fragments  bestrew  the  ancient  occult 
works.  This  again,  however,  is  no  novelty,  but 
another  of  the  recurrent  ideas  of  mystics  and  would- 
be  occultists.  All  of  them  have  tried  it,  but,  unfor- 
tunately, most  of  them  come  to  different  conclusions. 
"^E's"  guesses  must,  therefore,  be  taken  as  guesses 


"Candle  of  Vision'  105 

only,   to  be   compared  with   the  guesses  with   other 
students. 

Page  132.  One  of  the  features  of  the  Candle  of 
Vision  is  the  occasional  ray  cast  by  U^E"  upon  the 
obscure  texts  of  the  Bible.  The  Bible,  of  course,  is 
for  the  most  part  unmistakably  "occult";  and  not  only 
its  stories  are  myths  ("which  things  are  an  allegory"), 
but  many  of  its  texts  are  echoes  of  a  gnosis;  infinitely 
older  than  the  Christian  era.  Greece,  it  has  now  been 
established,  was  an  infant  when  Egypt  was  old;  and 
Egypt,  in  its  turn,  was  an  infant  when  some  civiliza- 
tion anterior  to  it  was  in  its  dotage.  The  Bible  is  a 
kind  of  urk,  in  which  were  stored  (without  much 
order,  I  imagine)  some  of  the  traditions  of  the  world 
that  was  about  to  be  submerged.  They  can  be 
brought  to  life  again,  however,  and  here  and  there, 
in  the  course  of  the  Candle  of  Vision,  ".#£"  undoubt- 
edly rejuvenates  a  Biblical  text,  and  restores  to  it  its 
ancient  meaning.  "He  made  every  flower  before  it 
was  in  the  field,  and  every  herb  before  it  grew." 
This  points,  says  "j*E,"  to  the  probability  that  the 
Garden  of  Eden  was  the  "Garden  of  the  Divine 
Mind,"  in  which  flowers  and  herbs  and  all  the  rest  of 
creation  lived  before  they  were  made — visible  !  Such 
a  conception  is  very  illuminating.  Moreover,  it 
brings  the  story  of  Genesis  into  line  with  the  genesis 
stories  of  both  ancient  India  and  the  most  recent  psy- 
chology. For  modern  psycho-analysis,  in  the  re- 
searches of  Jung  in  particular,  is  undoubtedly  trem- 
bling on  the  brink  of  the  discovery  of  the  divine  mind 


106  Readers  and  Writers 

which  precedes  visible  creation.  The  process  is  in- 
dissolubly  linked  up  with  the  psychology  of  imagina- 
tion, phantasm,  and  vision. 

Page  137.     On  Power.     "//  we  have  not  power  we 
are  nothing,  and  must  remain  outcasts  of  Heaven" 
In  this  chapter  "IE"  shakes  the  fringes  of  the  most 
dangerous  subject  in  the  world,  that  of  the  acquisition 
of  "spiritual"  power.    I  put  the  word  under  suspicion, 
because  while  in  the  comparative  sense  spiritual,  the 
powers  here  spoken  of  may  be  anything  but  beneficent. 
The  instructions  to  be  found  in,  let  us  say,  Patanjall, 
are  full  of  warnings  against  the  acquisition  of  occult 
powers  before  the  character  of  the  student  is  "purified." 
We  are  a  long  way,  of  course,  from  the  plane  of  con- 
ventional goodness  in  the  use  of  this  word  purity.    The 
conventionally  good  may  have  all  the  characteristics 
of  the  black  magician  (so-called)   when  he  finds  him- 
self in  the  possession  of  power.     Purity,  in  the  sense 
implied,  connotes  non-attachment,  and  non-attachment, 
again,  implies  the  non-existence  of  any  personal  desire 
— even  for  the  good.     Nietzsche  died  before  he  be-  . 
gan  to  understand  himself.     His  pre-occupation  with 
the  problem  of  power  was  undoubtedly  an  occult  ex- 
ercise; and  his  discovery  that  spiritual  power  needs  to 
be  exercised  "beyond  good  and  evil,"  was  a  hint  of 
the     progress     he     had     made.     Unfortunately     for 
Nietzsche,  his  Beyond  Good  and  Evil  was  still  not 
clear  of  the  element  of  egotism;  he  carried  into  the 
occult  world  the  attachment  and  the  desire  that  em- 
phatically belong  to  the  world  of  both  Good  and  Evil. 


How  to  Read  107 

In  short,  he  attempted  to  take  Heaven  by  egoistic 
storm,  and  his  defeat  was  a  foregone  conclusion  and 
a  familiar  tragedy  in  occult  history.  "^E,"  like  his 
authorities,  is  full  of  warning  against  the  quest  of 
power.  At  the  same  time,  like  them,  he  realizes  that 
without  power  the  student  can  do  nothing.  Here  is 
the  paradox,  the  mightiest  in  psychology,  that  the 
weakest  is  the  strongest  and  the  strongest  the  weak- 
est. I  commend  this  chapter  to  Nietzscheans  in  par- 
ticular. They  have  most  to  learn  from  it. 

Page  153  et  seq.  U^E"  makes  an  attempt  to  sys- 
tematize "Celtic  cosmogony."  It  appears  to  me  to 
be  altogether  premature,  and  of  as  little  value  as  the 
"interpretation"  of  Blake's  cosmogony,  which  Messrs. 
Yeats  and  Ellis  formerly  attempted.  Celtic  cosmog- 
ony, as  found  in  Irish  legend  and  tradition,  may  be 
a  cosmogony,  and  perhaps  one  of  the  oldest  in  the 
world  (for  Ireland  is  always  with  us!).  But  the 
fragmentary  character  of  the  records,  the  absence  of 
any  living  tradition  in  them,  coupled  with  the  difficulty 
of  re-interpretation  in  rational  terms,  make  even  "^E's" 
effort  a  little  laborious.  There  is  little  illumination 
in  the  Candle  when  it  becomes  an  Irish  boglight. 


*   * 


How  to  Read 

The  greatest  books  are  only  to  be  grasped  by  the 
total  understanding  which  is  called  intuition.     As  an 


Io8  Readers  and  Writers 

aid  to  the  realization  of  the  truth,  we  may  fall  back 
upon  the  final  proofs  of  idiom  and  experience.  Idiom 
is  the  fruit  of  wisdom  on  the  tree  of  language;  and 
experience  is  both  the  end  and  the  beginning  of  idiom. 
What  more  familiar  idiom  is  there  than  that  which 
expresses  the  idea  and  the  experience  of  reading  a 
book  "between  the  lines";  reading,  in  fact,  what  is 
not  there  in  the  perception  of  our  merely  logical  under- 
standing? And  what,  again,  is  more  familiar  than 
the  experience  of  "having  been  done  good"  by  reading 
a  great,  particularly  a  great  mystical  or  poetical  work, 
like  the  Bible  or  Milton;  still  more,  by  reading  such 
works  as  the  Mahabharata?  Idiom  and  experience 
do  not  deceive  us.  The  "subconscious"  of  every  great 
book  is  vas.tly  greater  than  its  conscious  element,  as  the 
"subconscious"  of  each  of  us  is  many  times  richer  in 
content  than  our  conscious  minds.  Reading  between 
the  lines,  resulting  often  and  usually  in  a  sense  of 
illuminated  bewilderment,  difficult  to  put  into  words, 
is  in  reality  intuitional  reading;  the  subconscious  in  the 
reader  is  put  into  relation  with  the  subconscious  of  the 
writer.  Deep  communicates  with  deep.  No  "inter- 
pretation" of  an  allegorical  kind  need  result  from  it. 
We  may  be  unable  at  once  to  put  into  words  any  of 
the  ideas  we  have  gathered.  Patience!  The  truths 
thus  grasped  will  find  their  way  to  the  conscious  mind, 
and  one  day,  perhaps,  to  our  lips. 


* 
*   * 


Looking  for  the  Dawn  109 

The  Old  Country 

A  country  may  grow  aged  in  mind  long  before  it  is 
really  old  in  history,  and  it  may  be  the  case  with  Eng- 
land that  long  before  she  is  old  in  history  her  mind  is 
becoming  aged.  The  peculiarity  of  the  aged  mind  is 
not  that  it  cannot  think,  but  that  it  cannot  think  new 
thoughts.  All  its  energy  runs  in  grooves,  and  there 
is  none  to  spare  for  the  cutting  of  a  new  road  into 
new  ideas.  There  is  little  and  less  "free  mind"  in 
England.  Like  the  commons  and  the  common-wealth, 
all  the  mind-energy  has  been  appropriated  by  one  in- 
terest or  another,  with  the  consequence  that  every 
fresh  idea  is  compelled  either  to  starve  at  home  or 
to  emigrate  abroad.  America,  as  an  intellectually 
youthful  nation  (may  it  never  grow  aged!)  reaps  the 
advantage  of  the  decline  of  its  aged  parent.  Ideas 
that  cannot  pick  up  a  living  in  this  country,  owing  to 
the  appropriations  of  energy  already  made,  may  emi- 
grate to  America  and  flourish  there. 


*** 


Looking  for  the  Dawn 

The  Spring  issue  of  Art  and  Letters  has  been  long 
enough  out  to  have  had  its  run  for  its  money.  Con- 
sequently I  am  free  to  say  that  it  is  not  only  not  so 
good  as  the  first  issue,  but  that  the  descent  has  been 
steep  as  well  as  rapid.  This  decline  from  the  almost 


no  Readers  and  Writers 

sublime  to  the  more  than  ridiculous  was  inevitable 
from  the  peculiar  characteristics  of  our  immediately 
contemporary  epoch;  for  it  is  the  sober  truth  that  our 
contemporary  world  does  not  supply  youthful  stuff 
enough  to  make  more  than  a  single  issue  of  a  literary 
magazine  of  high  pretension.  I  have  looked  about 
me  with  the  eye  of  an  eagle  and  the  appetite  of  a 
raven  to  discover  youthful  talent  possibly  budding  into 
genius.  A  few  sprigs  and  sprays  have  fallen  within 
my  vision,  and  I  have  counted  myself  recompensed  for 
hours  and  years  of  trouble.  But  at  this  present  mo- 
ment such  apparitions  and  premonitions  of  the  future 
are  fewer  than  ever  I  have  known  them  to  be. 
Whether  it  is  that  more  than  individual — collective 
talent — has  fallen  in  the  war;  whether  the  increasing 
pre-occupation  of  men's  minds  with  economics  has 
proportionately  impoverished  the  will  to  literature  of 
our  young  men;  or  whether  a  critical  taste  is  losing 
generosity,  the  number  of  fresh  talents  just  being  com- 
mitted to  us  appears  utterly  unequal  to  the  unequalled 
opportunity  for  employing  them.  There  never  was 
a  time  when  it  was  easier  for  a  young  writer  to  find 
publication  in  one  form  or  another.  The  number  of 
new  magazines  projected  and  issued  recently  has  been 
legion.  I  have  examined  most  of  them;  for  it  is  my 
hobby  to  collect  the  earliest  specimens,  and  it  is  my 
unpleasant  opinion  that  most  of  them  would  be  better 
for  never  having  been  born. 

They  manage,  or,  at  any  rate,  they  are  beginning 
to  manage  these  things  better  in  America.  That 
America  is  the  country  of  the  future  is  open  to  less 


Looking  for  the  Dawn  in 

doubt  as  a  prophecy  when  the  critic  has  made  ac- 
quaintance with  the  new  and  renewed  magazines  now 
appearing  in  that  country.  A  tone  of  provinciality 
still  dominates  a  considerable  part  of  the  American 
literary  Press,  but  it  is  obvious  that  tremendous  efforts 
are  being  made  to  recover  or,  let  us  say,  to  discover 
centrality.  American  literary  editors  are  more  and 
more  aiming  to  interest  the  world  of  readers  rather 
than  a  mere  province  of  them.  I  need  scarcely  say 
that  the  world  of  readers  is  not  the  same  thing  as  a 
world  of  readers.  A  world  of  readers  connotes  large 
numbers,  consisting  chiefly  of  readers  in  search  of 
amusement;  but  the  world  of  readers  consists  of  the 
few  in  every  country  who  really  read  for  their  living, 
or  rather,  for  their  lives.  To  appeal  to  the  latter  class 
is  to  be  "of  the  centre,"  for  the  centre  of  every  move- 
ment of  life  is  not  only  the  most  vital,  it  is  the  small- 
est element,  of  the  whole.  The  most  recent  American 
literary  journals  appear  to  me  to  be  endeavouring  to 
become  organs  for  this  class  of  reader.  It  is  not  in- 
dicated more  plainly  in  the  fact  that  they  are  enlisting 
European  writeis  than  in  the  fact  that  their  American 
contributors  are  writing  to  be  read  in  Europe  as  well 
as  in  America.  America  has  begun  to  discover  Eu- 
rope. America  is  on  the  way  to  absorb  Europe.  In 
the  course  of  a  few  generations,  if  the  present  Ameri- 
can magazines  may  be  taken  as  indicating  direction, 
European  writers  will  be  as  intelligible  in  America 
as  in  Europe;  and,  perhaps,  more  so. 


* 
*   * 


112  Readers  and  Writers 

Fielding  for  America 

It  is  very  doubtful  whether  anybody  reads  Fielding 
nowadays,  nevertheless,  like  all  the  eighteenth  century 
writers,  he  is  more  than  worth  all  the  time  we  waste 
on  certain  contemporaries.  There  is  nothing  of  the 
"damned  literary"  about  Fielding;  but  also  there  is 
nothing  of  what  usually  goes  with  the  absence  of 
letters,  sentimentality.  Fielding's  letters,  one  feels, 
were  absorbed  into  his  blood;  they  did  not  remain  like 
crumbs  on  the  lips  after  a  barbarian  repast.  Fielding 
could  carry  his  letters  as  his  contemporaries  boasted 
they  could  carry  their  port — without  showing  it.  And 
it  was  no  less  the  case  that  he  carried  his  feelings  with 
the  same  well-bred  ease,  without  displaying  them, 
and,  even  more,  without  permitting  them  to  rule  his 
intelligence.  Richardson  seems  born  to  have  pro- 
voked Fielding  to  write.  He  incarnated  everything 
that  Fielding  thought  worth  a  negative.  But  for 
Richardson,  Fielding  would  possibly  have  never  found 
his  true  metier;  Richardson  was  his  twin  opposite. 
Fielding,  however,  must  always  pay  the  penalty  of 
being  a  reactionary,  of  requiring  a  stimulant;  he  is  no 
creator,  for  the  stuff  of  creation  was  not  native  to 
him.  He  is  an  amusing  causeur  with  his  eye  always 
upon  Richardson;  a  man  of  the  world  telling  a  story 
a  la  Richardson,  but  with  the  explanations  common  to 
the  class  of  English  gentlemen.  He  is  put  among 
the  English  Men  of  Letters  in  the  series  edited  by 
Lord  Morley,  and  now  he  is  receiving  attention  in 


Poor  Authors!  113 

America.  America  needs  Fielding;  for  what  is 
America  in  danger  of  becoming  but  a  kind  of  Richard- 
son continent?  Our  eighteenth  century  writers  are  a 
school  to  which  American  literature  must  go  as  a 
means  of  escape  from  the  Roundhead  tradition  which 
otherwise  America  will  scarcely  succeed  in  overpassing. 
I  cannot  conceive,  however,  that  Tom  Jones  will  be 
popular  in  America  yet  awhile.  He  has  more  resist- 
ance to  encounter  there  than  in  any  other  civilized 
nation.  But  until  Tom  Jones  can  be  read  in  America 
without  a  blush,  American  literature  will  remain 
several  centuries  behind  English  and  European 
literature. 


* 
*  * 


Poor  Authors ! 

Is  it  a  fact  that  the  dearness  of  literature  alone  or 
mainly  restricts  its  sale?  Is  it  certain  that  either 
cheap  publication  or  (what  amounts  to  the  same 
thing)  a  generous  diffusion  of  money  among  the 
masses  would  ensure  the  success  of,  let  us  say,  good 
first  novels — in  the  present  state  of  public  taste  ?  We 
have  had  some  experience  both  of  cheapness  and  of 
the  diffusion  of  money.  Publication  was  cheap 
enough  before  the  war  in  all  conscience.  New  novels 
could  be  brought  out  for  a  shilling.  Was  it  the  com- 
mon experience  that  the  best  of  them  proved  a  com- 
mercial success?  The  best  of  them  were  nine  times 
out  of  ten  a  commercial  failure.  And  in  respect  of 


114  Readers  and  Writers 

the  diffusion  of  money,  what  has  been  our  experience 
of  the  direction  in  which  the  diffused  money  has  been 
spent?  Have  the  masses  accumulated  libraries? 
Have  they  patronized  the  arts?  Have  they  encour- 
aged literature  with  discriminating  taste?  Have  they 
sought  out  and  bought  the  young  authors,  the  promis- 
ing writers,  the  writers  of  tomorrow?  We  know 
they  have  done  nothing  of  the  kind.  The  diffused 
money  has  fallen,  for  the  most  part,  into  two  sets  of 
hands,  the  hands  of  the  ignorant  profiteers  and  the 
hands  of  the  ignorant  masses.  And  both  classes  have 
neglected  literature  in  favour  of  sports  and  furs,  dis- 
play and  amusement.  It  is  idle  to  pretend  that  things 
are  other  than  they  are.  We  need  not  necessarily  be 
discouraged  by  the  fact,  but  it  is  necessary  to  recog- 
nize the  facts.  And  the  facts  in  the  present  case  are 
that  the  people  who  have  the  money  (much  or  little) 
do  not  care  a  shilling  for  literature  and  accept  no 
responsibility  for  its  existence.  Their  excuse  for  the 
moment  is  that  literature  is  too  dear;  but  it  would  be 
all  the  same  if  it  were  cheap.  I  have  never  observed 
that  rich  or  poor  have  complained  that  their  sports 
and  amusements  are  too  dear.  Nobody  appeals  to 
cinema-proprietors  or  yachting  entrepreneurs  to  pity 
their  clients  and  ruin  themselves  commercially.  When 
the  public  wants  literature  as  much  as  it  wants  to  be 
entertained,  there  will  be  no  need  for  anybody's 
charity. 

In  the  meanwhile,  what  is  the  young  writer  to  do? 
In  particular,  the  young  novelist?  He  appears  to  be 
about  to  be  among  the  most  miserable  of  mankind. 


On  Guard  115 

To  be  published  and  to  be  a  commercial  failure  is  bad 
enough  in  a  country  like  our  own,  where  a  succes 
d'estime  is  almost  a  certificate  for  pity.  But  not  to 
be  published  at  all  is  infinitely  worse.  Instead  of  ap- 
pealing to  commercial  publishers,  however,  is  it  not 
possible  to  appeal  to  the  Guild  of  Authors,  to  the  fra- 
ternity whose  function  and  responsibility  arc  the  crea- 
tion and  encouragement  of  literature?  Who  should 
be  patrons  of  literature  if  not  men  of  letters  them- 
selves? And  whose  duty  should  it  be,  if  not  that  of 
novelists  as  a  guild,  to  secure  the  succession  and  to 
provide  for  the  future  princes?  If  publishers  are 
willing  to  assume  the  burdens  of  literature — always 
heavy  in  proportion  to  the  ignorance  of  the  public- 
let  them  by  all  means.  So  much  the  more  honour  to 
them.  But  the  proper  shoulders  for  the  burden,  in 
the  absence  of  an  enlightened  public,  are  the  shoulders 
of  the  Guild  of  Letters,  the  shoulders,  in  particular, 
of  the  successful  men.  There  is  no  lack  of  money 
among  them.  I  should  roughly  calculate  that  the  in- 
come of  our  successful  novelists  is  more  than  equal 
to  that  of  all  our  publishers  put  together.  Why  should 
they  not  subsidize  literature?  Why,  out  of  their 
abundance,  should  they  not  set  aside  a  portion  for 
their  literary  posterity? 


*   * 


On  Guard 

As  one  of  the  thirty  thousand  who  take  in  and  oc- 
casionally  read    The    Times   Literary   Supplement,   I 


Ii6  Readers  and  Writers 

may  draw  attention  to  the  danger  to  truth  its  com- 
posite character  is  always  creating.  Being  familiar 
with  the  back-ways  of  publishing  I  am  not  taken  in,  of 
course,  by  the  uniform  use  of  the  editorial  "we"  in  a 
journal  like  The  Times  Literary  Supplement.  "We" 
represents  a  score  of  different  people,  all,  or  most  of 
whom  are  as  much  at  intellectual  sixes  and  sevens  as 
any  other  score;  and  the  editor-in-chief,  whoever  he 
may  be,  is  just  as  powerless  as  a  sovereign  is  over  its 
twenty  shillings.  That  being  granted,  the  situation 
is  still  a  little  strange  from  the  fact  that  certain  senti- 
ments are  allowed  to  appear  in  the  Literary  Supple- 
ment which,  to  say  the  least,  are  incongruous  with 
The  Times  and  all  The  Times  stands  for.  Here,  for 
instance,  are  three  quotations  from  recent  issues: 
"Whether  you  beat  your  neighbour  by  militarism  or 
buy  him  by  industrialism — the  effect  is  the  same." 
"That  most  fals'e  and  nauseating  of  legends — 'the 
happy  warrior.'  '  "The  organization  of  trade  is  of 
secondary  moment:  what  is  of  the  first  moment  is  the 
organization  of  a  humane  enjoyment  of  its  benefits." 
These  sentiments  are  true,  and  they  are  sufficiently 
strikingly  put.  But  in  The  Times  Literary  Supple- 
ment they  are  not  only  incongruous,  but  they  are  in  a 
very  subtle  sense,  actually  lies,  and  the  more  dangerous 
lies  from  their  identity  with  the  truth.  It  is  one  of 
the  paradoxes  of  truth  that  a  statement  is  only  true 
when  it  is  in  truthful  company.  As  the  corruption  of 
the  best  is  the  worst,  so  evil  communications  corrupt 
good  statements,  and  a  truth  in  bad  company  is  the 
worst  of  lies.  It  is  a  mystery  not  easily  to  De  under- 


The  Coming  Renaissance         117 

stood,  but  the  intuition  may,  perhaps,  make  something 
of  it.  Is  it  not  the  fact  that  the  occurrence  of  state- 
ments like  those  just  quoted  in  The  Times  Literary 
Supplement  causes  a  feeling  of  nausea?  On  examin- 
ing the  cause  it  will  be  found  to  lie  in  the  unconscious 
realization  that  such  statements  are  there  made  for 
no  good  purpose,  but  are  only  decoy  ducks  for  the 
better  snaring  of  our  suffrages  for  the  real  policy  of 
The  Times  itself. 

*   * 


The  Coming  Renaissance 

The  prognostication  of  the  approach  of  a  new  Re- 
naissance has  quite  naturally  been  received  with  in- 
credulity. Is  it  not  the  fact  that  civilization  is  in  a 
thoroughly  morbid  condition  bordering  on  hysteria, 
and  was  ever  the  outlook  for  culture  darker  than  it  is 
at  this  moment?  I  have  just  been  discussing  the  sub- 
ject with  a  friend  who  laid  this  evidence  before  me 
with  a  touch  of  reproach:  how  could  I,  in  the  face  of 
such  a  circle  of  gloom,  pretend  that  we  were  even 
possibly  (which  is  all  I  affirm)  on  the  eve  of  a  new 
Renaissance?  My  explanation  of  this  part  of  the 
story  is,  however,  quite  simple.  The  war  has  precipi- 
tated a  development  in  external  events  faster  than  the 
average  mind  has  been  able  to  adapt  itself  to  them, 
with  the  consequence  that  the  average  mind  has  had 
to  take  refuge  in  hysteria.  For  the  greater  part  of 
hysteria  is  due  to  nothing  more  than  an  inadequacy 


n8  Readers  and  Writers 

of  the  mind  to  a  given  situation;  and  when  the  situa- 
tion as  given  today  is  a  situation  that  should  and 
would,  but  for  the  war,  have  arisen  only,  let  us  say, 
twenty  years  hence,  there  is  no  wonder  that  in  the  mass 
of  the  slowly  developing  minds  of  our  people  an  in- 
adequacy to  the  occasion  should  be  experienced  or  that 
the  result  should  appear  as  hysteria.  On  the  other 
hand,  hysteria  is  not  a  stable  condition  of  the  mind; 
it  is  a  transition  to  a  more  complete  adaptation  to 
reality,  or,  in  the  alternative,  to  complete  disintegra- 
tion. But  what  is  to  be  expected  from  the  present 
situation?  Not,  surely,  disintegration  in  the  general 
sense,  though  it  may  take  place  in  individual  cases, 
but  a  forward  movement  in  the  direction  of  adapta- 
tion. This  forward  movement  is  the  Renaissance, 
and  it  is  thus  from  the  very  circumstances  of  gloom 
and  hysteria  that  we  may  draw  the  hope  that  a  fresh 
advance  of  the  human  spirit  is  about  to  be  made. 

It  is  significant  that  concurrently  with  such  a  social 
diagnosis  as  any  one  may  make,  special  observers,  with 
or  without  a  bee  in  their  bonnet,  are  arriving  at  the 
same  conclusion.  There  are  very  confident  guesses 
now  being  disseminated  by  the  various  religious  and 
mystic  schools  concerning  what,  in  their  vocabulary, 
they  call  the  Second  Advent — which,  however,  may 
well  be  the  seven  hundredth  or  the  seven  thousandth 
for  all  we  know.  Attach  no  importance,  if  you  like, 
to  the  phenomena  in  question,  but  the  fact  of  the 
coincidence  of  forecast  is  somewhat  impressive;  for 
while  it  is  absurd  to  believe  the  "Second  Adventists" 
of  all  denominations  when  they  stand  alone  in  their 


Leonardo  da  Find  as  Pioneer     119 

prognostications,  their  testimony  is  not  negligible  when 
it  is  supported  by  what  amounts  to  science.  And  the 
fact  is  that  today  science,  no  less  than  mysticism,  is 
apprehensive  of  a  New  Coming  of  some  kind  or  other. 
What  the  nature  of  that  New  Coming  is  likely  to  be, 
and  when  or  how  it  will  manifest  itself,  are  matters 
beyond  direct  knowledge,  but  the  ear  of  science,  no 
less  than  the  ear  of  mysticism,  is  a  little  thrilled  with 
the  spirit  of  expectation. 


* 
*   * 


Leonardo  da  Vinci  as  Pioneer 

Leonardo  da  Vinci's  name  has  been  frequently 
mentioned  among  the  intelligent  during  the  last  few 
years,  and  it  cannot  be  without  a  meaning.  It  may 
be  said  that  his  reappearance  as  a  subject  for  discus- 
sion is  due  to  a  fortuitous  concurrence  of  publishers. 
But  accidents  of  this  kind  are  like  miracles:  they  do 
not  happen;  and  I,  for  one,  am  inclined  to  suspect  the 
"collective  unconscious"  of  a  design  in  thrusting  for- 
ward at  this  moment  the  name  and  personality  of  the 
great  Renaissance  humanist.  What  can  we  guess  the 
design  to  be?  What  is  the  interpretation  of  this 
prominent  figure  in  our  current  collective  dreams? 
The  symbols  appearing  in  dreams  are  the  expressive 
language  of  the  unconscious  mind,  and  the  appearance 
of  the  symbol  of  da  Vinci  is  or  may  be  an  indication 
that  the  "unconscious"  is  "dreaming"  of  a  new 
Renaissance.  And  since  the  dreams  of  the  uncon- 


I2O  Readers  and  Writers 

scious  today  are  or  may  be  the  acts  of  the  conscious 
tomorrow,  the  prevalent  interest  in  Leonardo  is  a 
further  possible  piece  of  evidence  that  we  are  or  may 
be  on  the  eve  of  a  recurrence  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance. 

Leonardo  as  an  artist  interests  us  less  than 
Leonardo  as  a  person.  That  is  not  to  say  that 
Leonardo  was  not  a  great  artist,  for,  of  course,  he  was 
one  of  the  greatest.  But  it  is  to  say  that  the  promise 
of  which  he  was  an  incarnation  was  even  greater  than 
the  fulfilment  which  he  achieved.  There  is  a  glorious 
sentence  in  one  of  the  Upanishads  which  is  attributed 
to  the  Creator  on  the  morrow  of  His  completion  of 
the  creation  of  the  whole  manifested  universe.  "Hav- 
ing pervaded  all  this,"  he  says,  "I  remain."  Not  even 
the  creation  of  the  world  had  exhausted  His  powers 
or  even  so  much  as  diminished  His  self-existence. 
When  that  greatest  of  works  of  art  had  been  accom-. 
plished,  He,  the  Creator,  "remained."  Leonardo 
was,  if  I  may  use  the  expression,  a  chip  of  the  original 
block  in  this  respect.  His  works,  humanly  speaking, 
were  wonderful;  they  were  both  multitudinous  and 
various.  Nevertheless,  after  the  last  of  them  had 
been  performed,  Leonardo  remained  as  a  great 
"promise,"  still  unfulfilled.  That  is  the  character  of 
the  Renaissance  type,  as  it  is  also  the  character  of  a 
Renaissance  period;  its  promise  remains  over  even 
after  great  accomplishment.  The  Renaissance  man 
is  greater  than  his  work;  he  pervades  his  work,  but 
he  is  not  submerged  in  it. 

I  should  be  trespassing  on  the  domain  of  the  psycho- 


Leonardo  da  Find  as  Pioneer     121 

analysts  if  I  were  to  attempt  to  indicate  the  means 
by  which  a  collective  hysteria  may  be  resolved  into  an 
integration.  Taking  the  Italian  Renaissance,  how- 
ever, as  a  sort  of  working  model,  and  Leonardo  da 
Vinci  as  its  typical  figure,  it  would  appear  that  the 
method  of  resolution  is  all-round  expression — ex- 
pression in  as  many  forms  and  fields  as  the  creative 
powers  direct.  Leonardo  was  not  only  an  artist,  he 
was  a  sculptor,  a  poet,  an  epigrammatist,  an  engineer, 
a  statesman,  a  soldier,  a  musician,  and  I  do  not  know 
what  else  besides.  He  indulged  his  creative  or  ex- 
pressive impulses  in  every  direction  his  "fancy"  indi- 
cated. Truly  enough  he  was  not  equally  successful  in 
an  objective  or  critical  sense  in  all  these  fields;  but, 
quite  as  certainly  he  owed  his  surpassing  excellence  in 
one  or  two  of  them  to  the  fact  that  he  tried  them  all. 
The  anti-  or  non-Renaissance  type  of  mind  would 
doubtless  conclude  that  if  Leonardo,  let  us  say, 
had  been  content  to  be  only  a  painter,  or  only 
a  sculptor,  he  would  have  succeeded  even  more 
perfectly  in  that  single  mode  of  expression  into  which 
ex  hypothesi  he  might  have  poured  the  energy  other- 
wise squandered  in  various  subordinate  channels. 
But  concentrations  of  energy  of  this  kind  are  not  al- 
ways successful;  the  energies,  in  fact,  are  not  always 
convertible;  and  the  attempt  to  concentrate  may  thus 
have  the  effect,  not  only  of  failing  of  its  direct  object, 
but  of  engaging  one  part  of  the  total  energy  in  sup- 
pressing another.  At  any  rate,  the  working  hypoth- 
esis (and  it  did  work)  of  the  Renaissance  type  is  that 
a  natural  multiplicity  of  modes  of  expression  is  better 


122  Readers  and  Writers 

than  an  unnatural  or  forced  concentration.  The 
latter,  if  successful,  may  possibly  lead  to  something 
wonderful;  but  if  unsuccessful,  it  ends  in  hysteria,  in 
unresolved  conflicts.  The  former,  on  the  other  hand, 
while  it  may  lead  to  no  great  excellence  in  any  direction 
(though  equally  it  may  be  the  condition  of  excellence) 
is,  at  any  rate,  a  resolution  of  the  internal  conflict. 
We  shall  be  well  advised  to  deny  ourselves  nothing 
in  the  region  of  aesthetic  creation.  Let  us  "dabble" 
to  our  hearts'  content  in  every  art-form  to  which  our 
"fancy"  invites  us.  The  results  in  a  critical  sense  may 
be  unimportant;  "art  happens,"  as  Whistler  used  to 
say,  and  it  "happens,"  it  may  be  added,  in  the  course 
of  play.  The  play  is  the  thing,  and  I  have  little  doubt 
that  the  approaching  Renaissance  will  be  heralded  by 
a  revival  of  dilettantism  in  all  the  arts. 


* 
*   * 


''Shakespeare"  Simplified 

English  literary  criticism  lies  under  the  disgrace  of 
accepting  Shakespeare,  the  tenth-rate  player,  as 
Shakespeare  the  divine  author,  and  so  long  as  a 
mistake  of  this  magnitude  is  admitted  into  the  canon, 
nobody  of  any  conception  can  treat  the  canon  with 
respect.  My  theory  of  authorship  is  simple,  rational, 
and  within  the  support  of  common  experience.  All 
it  requires  is  that  we  should  assume  that  Shakespeare 
the  theatre-manager  had  on  his  literary  staff  or  within 
call  a  wonderful  dramatic  genius  whose  name  we  do 


"London  Mercury"  and  English    123 

not  yet  know;  that  this  genius  was  as  modest  as  he 
was  wonderful,  and  as  adaptable  as  he  was  original; 
and  that,  of  the  plays  passed  to  him  for  licking  into 
shape  (plays  drawn  from  Shakespea.re,  the  actor- 
manager's  store),  some  he  scarcely  touched,  others  he 
changed  only  here  and  there,  while  a  few,  the  few  that 
appealed  to  his  "fancy,"  he  completely  transformed 
and  re-created  in  his  own  likeness.  There  is  nothing 
incredible,  nothing  even  requiring  much  subtlety  to 
accept,  in  this  hypothesis.  The  Elizabethan  age  was 
a  strange  age.  It  had  very  little  of  the  passion  for 
self-advertisement  that  distinguishes  our  own.  It  con- 
tained many  anonymous  geniuses  of  whom  the  obscure 
translators  of  the  Bible  were  only  one  handful.  The 
author  of  the  plays  may  well  have  been  one  of  the 
number — a  quiet,  modest,  retiring  sort  of  man,  thank- 
ful to  be  able  to  find  congenial  work  in  re-shaping  plays 
to  his  own  liking.  That,  at  any  rate,  is  my  surmise, 
and  so  far  from  thinking  the  theory  unimportant,  I 
believe  it  throws  a  beam  of  light  on  the  psychology 
of  genius  during  the  Elizabethan  age. 


*   * 


The  "London  Mercury"  and  English 

It  goes  without  saying  that  the  London  Mercury 
had  what  is  called  a  "good  Press."  Without  imput- 
ing it  to  Mr.  Squire  for  unrighteousness,  it  is  a  fact 
that  Mr.  Squire  has  a  "good  Press"  for  whatever  he 
chooses  to  do.  He  appears  to  have  been  born  with  a 


124  Readers  and  Writers 

silver  pen  in  his  mouth,  and  for  quite  a  number  of 
years  now  it  has  been  impossible  to  take  a  literary 
journal  without  finding  praise  of  Mr.  Squire  in  it.  As 
a  poet  Mr.  Squire  deserves  nearly  all  that  is  said  of 
him;  not  for  the  mass  of  his  work,  but  for  an  occa- 
sional poem  of  almost  supreme  excellence.  As  a 
literary  causeur,  of  whom  The  Times  said  in  compli- 
ment that  "he  never  makes  you  think,"  he  has  the  first 
and  great  qualification  of  readableness.  Finally,  as 
a  parodist  he  is  without  a  superior  in  contemporary 
literature.  But  when  one  has  said  this,  one  has  said 
all;  for  Mr.  Squire  is  not  a  great  or  even  a  sound  critic, 
he  is  not  an  impressive  writer,  and  he  is  not  a  dis- 
tinguished or  original  thinker.  Time  and  Mr.  Squire 
may  prove  my  judgment  wrong,  but  I  do  not  think, 
either,  that  he  will  make  a  great  or  inspiring  editor. 
Great  editorship  is  a  form  of  creation,  and  the  great 
editor  is  measured  by  the  number  and  quality  of  the 
writers  he  brings  to  birth — or  to  ripeness.  We  see  in 
course  of  time  whether  Mr.  Squire  is  a  creator  in  this 
sense.  So  far,  he  has  not  even  a  dark  horse  in  his 
stable. 

Among  the  objects  set  out  to  be  accomplished  by  the 
London  Mercury  is  the  advancement  of  English  style. 
It  is  a  worthy  and  even  a  momentous  object,  but  the 
London  Mercury  is  not  the  first  modern  journal  to  set 
out  upon  this  quest.  After  all,  I,  in  my  way,  during 
the  last  seven  years  or  so,  have  made  occasional 
references  to  current  English  style,  and  my  comments 
cannot  be  said  to  be  distinguishd  by  any  particular 
tenderness  to  bad  English,  by  whomsoever  lit  has  been 


"London  Mercury'  and  English    125 

written.  It  amused  me,  therefore,  to  read  sundry  and 
divers  exhortations  to  Mr.  Squire  to  be  severe,  and, 
if  need  be,  "savage"  in  criticism,  and  especially  when 
I  observed  that  some  of  the  names  appended  to  the 
advice  were  of  writers  who  have  anything  but  appre- 
ciated the  severity,  let  alone  the  "savagery,"  of  re- 
views addressed  to  themselves.  Let  it  pass.  The 
thing  in  question  is  English  style,  and  nobody  can  be 
too  enthusiastic  in  its  maintenance  and  improvement. 
The  peril  of  English  style,  I  take  it,  lies  in  its  very 
virtue,  that  of  directness,  and  its  fighting  edges  are  to 
be  found  where  the  colloquial  and  the  vernacular 
(or,  let  us  say,  the  idiomatic)  meet  and  mix.  The 
English  vernacular  is  the  most  powerful  and  simple 
language  that  was  ever  written,  but  the  danger  always 
lies  in  wait  for  it  of  slipping  into  the  English  col- 
loquial, which,  by  the  same  token,  is  one  of  the  worst 
of  languages.  The  difference  between  them  is  pre- 
cisely the  difference  between  Ariel  and  Caliban;  and 
I  am  not  sure  that  "Shakespeare"  had  not  this,  among 
other  things,  in  mind  when  he  dreamed  his  myth. 
Caliban  is  a  direct  enough  creature  to  be  English, 
and  there  are  writers  who  imagine  his  style  to  be  the 
mirror  of  perfection.  But  Ariel  is  no  less  direct; 
he  is  only  Caliban  transformed  and  purified  and  be- 
come a  thing  of  light.  There  is,  of  course,  no  rule 
for  distinguishing  between  them;  between  the  per- 
missible and  the  forbidden  use  of  the  colloquial;  for 
it  is  obvious  that  the  vernacular  is  finally  derived  from 
the  colloquial.  The  decision  rests  with  taste,  which 
alone  can  decide  what  of  the  colloquial  shall  be  al- 


126  Readers  and  Writers 

lowed  to  enter  into  the  vernacular.  In  general,  I 
should  say,  the  criterion  is  grace;  the  hardest,  the 
rarest,  but  the  most  exquisite  of  all  the  qualities  of 
style.  I  hope  one  day  to  see  English  written  in  the 
vernacular,  with  all  its  strength  and  directness,  but 
with  grace  added  to  it.  Newman,  perhaps,  was 
furthest  of  all  writers  on  the  way  to  it.  But  New- 
man did  not  always  charm.  Now  I  have  written  the 
word,  I  would  substitute  charm  for  grace,  and  say  that 
the  perfect  English  style,  which  nobody  has  yet  writ- 
ten, will  charm  by  its  power. 


* 
*   * 


Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  on  Rome  and  Ger- 
many 

Hovelaque's  Les  Causes  profondes  de  la  Guerre  is 
either  the  original  or  a  plagiarism  of  Mr.  G.  K.  Ches- 
terton's theory  that  the  war  was  only  an  episode  in 
the  eternal  "revolt"  of  "Germany"  against  "Rome." 
I  put  these  words  into  quarantine  to  signify  that  they 
are  to  be  handled  with  care;  for  it  is  not  only  Germany 
or  Rome  that  is  in  question,  but  the  psychological  char- 
acteristics and  the  relation  between  them  which  they 
embody.  Thus  raised  to  psychological  dimensions, 
Germany  and  Rome  become  principles,  types  of  men- 
tality: in  radical  opposition.  Germany  is  of  one 
camp,  Rome  is  of  the  other,  and  given  the  fact  of  their 
inherent  antagonism,  war  between  them  is  endless. 
Mr.  Mann,  a  German  writer,  has  carried  the  subject 


Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  127 

further;  he  has  entered  into  particulars.  In  the  fol- 
lowing pairs  of  qualities,  tabulated  by  Mr.  Mann,  the 
first  of  each  is  to  be  attributed  to  "Germany"  and  the 
other  to  "Rome."  Heroic,  rational;  people,  masses; 
personality,  individuality;  culture,  civilization;  spirit- 
ual life,  social  life;  aristocracy,  democracy;  romance, 
classicism;  nationalism,  internationalism.  I  do  not 
know  how  Mr.  Chesterton  will  fare  among  these  pairs 
of  opposites,  for  it  appears  to  me  that  his  preferences 
are  to  be  found  at  least  as  often  among  the  "German" 
group  as  among  the  "Roman"  group.  There,  how- 
ever, they  are,  as  drawn  up  by  a  supporter  of  his 
general  theory,  and  we  must  leave  him  to  make  the 
best  of  them. 

There  is  another  pair  which  Mr.  Mann  has  not 
mentioned,  though  it  has  been  brought  close  home  to 
many  of  us.  The  German  "Persius"  has  confessed 
that  "the  lie  has  always  been  one  of  Germany's  chief 
weapons,  both  by  land  and  sea."  The  lie,  however, 
is  not  the  "Roman"  way;  the  "Roman"  way  is  silence, 
and  anybody  engaged  in  the  dissemination  of  ideas 
knows  which  of  the  two  forms  of  opposition  is  the 
more  difficult  to  meet.  After  all,  the  liar  takes  risks; 
moreover,  he  does  the  idea  he  opposes  the  honour  of 
noticing  it  if  only  to  lie  about  it.  But  silence  risks 
nothing;  it  kills  without  leaving  a  trace. 

Leaving  the  subject  where,  for  the  moment,  it  Is, 
we  can  inquire  whether  the  suggested  antagonism  is 
not  altogether  false.  Is  Rome  so  eternal  as  all  that, 
or  Germany  either?  We  have  been  familiarized 
with  a  view  that  represents  the  map  of  Europe  as  a 


128  Readers  and  Writers 

map  primarily  of  mind;  but  I  can  discover  in  such  a 
map  no  confirmation  of  the  statement  that  it  is  Rome 
and  Germany  that  are  in  permanent  conflict.  On  the 
contrary,  what  we  call  "formal  mind" — in  other 
words,  the  rationalistic  consciousness — appears  to  me 
to  distinguish  "Rome"  quite  as  much  as  "Germany." 
It  may  be  true  that  on  the  whole,  the  "Roman"  qual- 
ities are  better  integrated  and  that  the  "Roman"  type 
is  more  completely  a  "man  of  the  world."  But,  in 
comparison  with  a  type  of  the  universal  man,  the  man 
of  the  whole  world,  I  doubt  whether  it  can  be  said 
that  the  "Roman"  is  much  more  inclusive  than  the 
German.  Both  exclude  a  good  deal,  and  thus  the  op- 
position between  them  is  not  of  principle,  but  of  ac- 
cident, the  accident  being  that  the  anthology  of 
qualities  which  we  call  "Rome"  differs  from  the 
anthology  called  German.  It  would  follow  from  this 
that  so  far  from  being  in  necessarily  eternal  conflict 
"Rome"  and  "Germany"  are  susceptible  of  a  synthe- 
sis in  which  the  qualities  of  each  will  complement  the 
qualities  of  the  other.  "Germany,"  in  other  words, 
needs  to  Romanize,  while  "Rome"  needs  to  Ger- 
manize. Their  approach  to  each  other  would  mark 
the  end  of  the  conflict. 

In  so  far  as  it  is  true  that  "Germany"  represents 
the  "elemental  instincts"  always  in  revolt  against 
"Rome,"  "the  representative  of  the  supremacy  of 
reason"  (Hovelaque),  there  are  grounds  for  believing 
that  a  psychological  rapprochement  is  neccessary  to 
the  psychic  health  no  less  than  to  the  peace  of  Europe. 
Long  before  the  war  we  heard,  even  in  this  country, 


Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  129 

criticism  of  the  right  of  reason  to  supremacy;  and, 
strangely  enough,  it  was  from  the  "Roman"  Mr.  Ches- 
terton that  the  criticism  came  most  powerfully.  "Ger- 
many," in  that  case,  may  certainly  be  said  to  have 
taken  the  lead  in  the  active  revolt  against  Rome;  but 
it  was,  we  must  observe,  against  a  Rome  already 
weakened  from  within  by  the  dissatisfaction  with 
Romanism  of  many  of  the  leading  "Romans."  The 
fact  is  that  the  "supremacy  of  reason,"  for  which 
"Rome"  stands,  is  always  in  danger,  like  every  other 
supremacy,  of  degenerating  into  a  dictatorship;  and 
the  dictatorship  which  reason  was  establishing  before 
the  war  involved  precisely  the  suppression  of  the  "ele- 
mental instincts"  attributed  to  Germany.  The  so- 
called  encirclement  of  Germany  was,  in  fact,  and  in 
psychological  terms,  the  rational  encirclement  of  in- 
stinct; and  I  must  again  observe  that  it  was  not  in  geo- 
graphical Germany  alone  that  the  encirclement  was 
felt  to  be  oppressive,  but  in  every  "Germany  within 
us,"  in  so  far  as  each  of  us  contained  "elemental  in- 
stincts" of  any  kind.  The  meaning  of  what  I  am 
saying  is  that  the  elemental  instincts,  call  them  Ger- 
man, or  anything  you  please,  cannot  be  permanently 
tyrannized  over  by  "reason";  nor  should  they  be. 
Nor  is  it  necessary  that  reason  should  attempt  such  a 
dictatorship.  Its  rule  should  be  that  of  a  constitu- 
tional monarch  under  the  direction  of  representatives, 
not  of  itself,  but  of  the  elemental  instincts.  The  prac- 
tical conclusion  to  be  drawn  is  that  the  "eternal  an- 
tagonism" of  "Rome"  and  "Germany"  is  not  a 
necessary  fact  in  psychology.  It  becomes  a  fact  only 


130  Readers  and  Writers 

when  "Rome"  aims  at  a  dictatorship  of  reason  to  the 
inevitable  isolation  and  suppression  of  "Germany." 
Reason  must  learn  how  to  cultivate  its  instincts. 

I  do  not  imagine  that  Mr.  Chesterton  identifies 
"Rome"  with  the  Holy  See,  though  others,  no  doubt, 
do.  It  is  interesting,  however,  to  remark  that  before 
the  war,  and  for  a  considerable  period  during  the  war, 
the  policy  of  the  Holy  See  was  directed  to  the  support 
of  Germany.  I  have  often  wondered  how  a  Catholic 
like  M.  Hovelaque  accommodates  his  thesis  with  that 
fact.  If  the  war,  as  he  says,  was  only  an  episode  in 
the  secular  conflict  of  Germany  with  Rome  (meaning 
the  Roman  Church  as  the  spiritual  successor  of  the 
Roman  Empire),  how  came  it  that  before  and  during 
the  war  the  directors  of  the  Roman  Church  were  pro- 
German?  Something  must  surely  be  wrong  here;  for 
either  the  Roman  Church  did  not  take  that  view  of 
Germany  which  M.  Hovelaque  has  defined,  or,  as 
seems  to  me  more  probable,  the  Holy  See  had  another 
end  in  view  than  victory  over  Germany,  namely,  alli- 
ance with  a  prospectively  victorious  Germany !  With 
this  key,  I  think,  the  mystery  is  unlocked  for  the  or- 
dinary man,  however  much  it  continues  sealed  to  the 
faithful.  As  The  Times  Literary  Supplement  said: 
"Modernists  understand  no  better  than  Newman  the 
springs  of  Roman  ecclesiastical  policy,  which  is  never 
fanatical  or  idealistic,  but  always  based  on  cool  politi- 
cal calculation."  And,  undoubtedly,  the  "cool  political 
calculation"  of  the  Holy  See,  both  before  and  during 
the  first  years  of  the  war,  was  that  Germany  would  win. 
If  this  was  not  the  case,  how  are  we  to  explain  the 


The  Origins  of  Marx  131 

sudden  change  over  of  policy  when  it  began  to  appear 
that  Germany,  after  all,  was  not  to  be  the  victor? 
That  at  a  certain  stage  in  the  war  such  a  change  took 
place  is  well  known  to  everybody,  and  it  was  openly 
admitted  in  the  Catholic  Dublin  Review.  "The 
pendulum  of  Catholicism,"  said  the  Dublin  Review, 
"has  swung  away  from  Germany  ...  with  Austria 
and  Spain  .  .  .  and  with  the  English-speaking  peoples 
and  their  Latin  Allies  the  Catholic  order  in  the  era  of 
the  future."  The  "eternal  conflict"  theory  must  go 
by  the  board  after  this,  for  it  obviously  fails  to  fit  the 
facts. 


*   * 


The  Origins  of  Marx 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  reputation  of  Marx  will 
not  long  survive  the  war  unimpaired.  I  can  scarcely 
think  that  the  German  Socialists  will  be  so  proud  of 
their  Marxism  in  the  future  as  they  have  been  in  the 
past,  since  it  will  have  clearly  betrayed  them  into  one  of 
the  most  shameful  moral  surrenders  in  all  history.  It  is 
dangerous  for  a  man's  writings  to  be  regarded  as  the 
"Bible"  even  of  Socialists;  and  when,  in  addition,  the 
Marxian  Bible,  unlike  the  other,  aims  at  and,  in  a 
sense,  achieves  logical  consistency,  the  peril  of  it  is 
greater  upon  minds  lacking  the  inestimable  virtue  of 
common  sense.  Marx  was  not  himself  a  slave  of  his 
own  inspiration;  he  was  anything  but  a  Marxian  in 
the  sense  in  which  his  followers  are  Marxian.  He 


132  Readers  and  Writers 

had,  indeed,  a  very  sharp  word  for  certain  of  the  dis- 
ciples whose  breed,  unfortunately,  has  not  been  ex- 
tinguished by  it.  "Amateur  anarchists,"  he  called 
them,  who  "make  up  by  rapid  declarations  and  blood- 
thirsty rampings  for  the  utter  insignificance  of  their 
political  existence."  Groups  of  his  disciples,  answer- 
ing perfectly  to  this  description,  are  to  be  found  today 
in  English  as  well  as  in  other  Labour  circles.  In  be- 
tween their  rampings  they  reveal  their  political  in- 
significance by  inquiring  of  each  other  such  elementary 
facts  about  literature  and  history  as  schoolboys  should 
be  ashamed  to  have  forgotten.  And  the  surprising 
thing  is  that  even  these  open  confessions  induce  no  re- 
action upon  their  conviction  that  they  understand 
Marx. 

It  is  a  common  supposition  among  Marx's  followers 
that  not  only  has  he  left  nothing  to  be  said  on  the 
subject  of  economics,  but  that  nothing  was  said  before 
him.  One  German  Socialist,  at  any  rate,  has  rid  him- 
self of  this  notion,  for  Dr.  Menger  has  remarked  that 
"'Marx  was  completely  under  the  influence  of  the 
earlier  English  Socialists,  and  more  particularly  of 
William  Thompson."  In  a  valuable  essay  upon  Marx, 
by  Professor  Alfred  Rahilly,  the  facts  are  let  out. 
Marx,  it  appears,  came  across  Thompson's  work  on 
The  Distribution  of  Wealth  (1824)  in  the  British 
Museum,  and  read  it  with  great  profit.  From 
Thompson  he  took  practically  all  his  chief  doctrines, 
with  the  exception  of  his  peculiar  interpretation  of 
history  in  terms  of  economics.  The  theory  of  Value 
as  measured  by  labour-power,  the  distinction  between 


Marx  as  Politician  133 

capital  and  capitalism,  the  law  of  decreasing  utility, 
and,  above  all,  the  very  phrase  as  well  as  the  very  idea 
of  Surplus  Value — all  of  these  "Marxian"  doctrines 
Marx  found  in  Thompson.  I  am  not  arguing  that 
Marx  was  the  less  for  having  been  indebted  to  his 
English  predecessors.  He  would,  indeed,  in  my  opin- 
ion, have  been  a  greater  man  if  he  had  borrowed  more 
of  Thompson,  for  Thompson  possessed  the  common 
sense  to  realize  that  it  was  possible  that  the  concentra- 
tion of  capital  might  take  place  simultaneously  with  a 
diffusion  of  ownership — an  idea  which  would  have 
spared  Marx  the  ignominy  of  many  of  his  most  fanati- 
cal disciples.  What,  on  the  other  hand,  was  great  in 
Marx,  was  his  capacity  for  large  generalizations,  and 
his  industry  in  establishing  them.  In  this  respect  he 
belonged  to  the  great  Victorians,  and,  as  such,  he  de- 
serves more  credit  than  his  present-day  followers  will 
permit  him  to  receive. 


*   * 


Marx  as  Politician 

The  centenary  celebrations  of  Marx  ought  not  to 
conclude  without  a  tribute  to  his  astonishing  political 
insight.  Philosophically  Marx  was  confused;  as  an 
economist  he  has  suffered  from  his  disciples;  but  as  a 
political  critic  he  has  seldom  been  surpassed.  Particu- 
lar attention  may  be  drawn  to  his  analysis  of  the  cir- 
cumstances of  Bismarck's  annexation  of  Alsace-Lor- 
raine, and  to  his  forecast  of  the  consequences.  Though 


134  Readers  and  Writers 

writing  in  London,  and  without  our  historic  knowledge 
of  the  Ems  telegram,  or  our  present  knowledge  of  the 
world-war,  Marx  might  have  written  his  manifesto 
today;  but,  in  that  case,  I  doubt  whether  he  would  be 
published  in  Germany,  or  read  with  much  attention  by 
Marx's  followers  in  this  country.  It  is  a  strange  re- 
flection, indeed,  upon  the  fate  of  the  works  of  Marx 
that  it  is  precisely  the  most  clear  and  prophetic  part 
of  them  which  his  professed  followers  neglect.  For 
his  dubious  forecasts  and  his  riddling  analyses  they 
have  a  reverence  that  transcends  bibliolatry;  but,  con- 
cerning his  most  absolute  and  explicit  political  policies 
— not  a  word ! 

The  war  of  1870,  as  we  all  know,  was  for  Germany 
a  declared  war  of  defence,  exactly  like  the  present  war. 
Germany  is  always  defending  herself  at  the  world's 
expense.  No  sooner,  however,  had  the  ostensible 
motive  of  defence  been  satisfied  by  Sedan,  than  the 
real  objects  of  German  militarism  began  to  be  re- 
vealed. Unhindered  by  the  earlier  protestations  of 
the  Emperor  William  that  Germany  was  at  war  only 
with  Napoleon,  and  not  with  France,  the  militarists 
inspired  the  German  liberal  bourgeoisie  to  press  for 
annexations  in  the  name  of  race  and  security.  They 
dared  to  pretend,  said  Marx,  that  the  people  of  the 
two  provinces  were  burning  to  be  annexed  to  Ger- 
many, and  they  adopted  without  reflection  the  excuse 
of  the  military  party  that  a  rectification  of  the  Im- 
perial frontiers  was  a  strategic  necessity.  Thus,  con- 
cluded Marx,  they  insisted  upon  sowing  in  the  terms 
of  peace  the  seeds  of  new  wars — the  phrase  is  Marx's 


John  Mite  he  I  as  the  Same        135 

own.  And  what  wars,  too!  Marx  was  not  blind  to 
their  probable  character.  History,  he  said,  would 
not  measure  the  German  offence  by  the  number  of 
miles  of  territory  annexed,  but  by  the  significance  of 
the  fact  of  annexation.  This  significance  was  no  less 
than  a  declaration  of  "a  policy  of  conquest,"  from 
which  might  be  anticipated  in  logical  order  a  German 
racial  war  against  "the  Slav  and  Latin  races  com- 
bined." The  war  of  1870,  having  thus  ended,  would, 
he  said,  be  the  precursor  of  a  series  of  international 
wars,  in  the  course  of  which  it  was  probable  that  the 
working-classes  everywhere  would  succumb  to  the 
forces  of  militarism  and  Capitalism.  What  com- 
ment has  the  Call  or  any  of  our  contemporary 
Marxian  pacifists  to  make  upon  this?  It  is  not  right 
that  they  should  ignore  it,  more  especially  when  it  is 
recalled  that  Marx  paid  a  tribute  to  the  English  work- 
ing-classes of  his  day,  who  "protested  with  all  their 
might  against  the  dismemberment  of  France." 


* 
*   * 


John  Mitchel  as  the  Same 

Marx,  however,  was  not  the  only  observer  of  the 
events  of  1870  to  be  moved  to  prophecy  by  them. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  everything  has  been  foreseen. 
John  Mitchel,  the  Irish  Nationalist,  whose  name  is 
invoked  by  Sinn  Feiners  today,  was  in  Paris  before 
the  1870  war,  and  wrote  of  the  events  of  the  war  in 
the  Irish  Citizen  and  elsewhere  during  its  progress. 


136  Readers  and  Writers 

He,  too,  had  no  illusions  concerning  the  nature  of 
Prussian  militarism,  and  though  his  sympathies  were 
mainly  with  France,  he  had  a  word  of  warning  for 
England.  "Prussia,"  he  said,  "cannot  be  England's 
friend.  Prussia  has  her  own  aspirations  and  am- 
bitions; one  of  these  is  to  be  a  great  maritime  power, 
or  rather  the  great  maritime  Power  of  Europe;  and 
nothing  in  the  future  can  be  more  sure  than  that 
Prussia,  if  successful  in  this  struggle  with  France,  will 
take  Belgium,  and  threaten  from  Antwerp  the  mouth 
of  the  Thames."  Things  have  not  worked  out  ex- 
actly as  Mitchel  prophesied,  but  they  have  worked 
out  nearly  enough  to  justify  his  political  clairvoyance. 
Like  Marx,  he  was  not  deceived  by  the  events  before 
him,  but  both  saw  in  them  the  shadows  of  the  events 
which  have  now  befallen  us.  I  remark  with  irony 
that  just  as  the  self-styled  followers  of  the  economist 
Marx  ignore  the  political  judgments  of  their  master, 
the  professed  inheritors  of  the  Nationalist  opinions 
of  Mitchel  ignore  his  international  opinions.  It  is  in 
this  way  that  the  garments  of  the  great  are  divided, 
and  the  seamless  coat  shredded  to  make  partisan 
ribbons. 


*  * 


Norse  in  English 

Professor  C.  H.  Herford  makes  a  meritorious  at- 
tempt to  recall  attention  to  the  influence  and  value  of 


Norse  in  English  137 

the  Norse  Myths  upon  English  Poetry.  William 
Morris  was  most  powerfully  and  directly  influenced 
by  the  Sagas,  and  of  Morris  Professor  Herford  says 
that  "no  other  English  poet  has  felt  so  keenly  the 
power  of  Norse  myth;  none  has  done  so  much  to- 
restore  its  terrible  beauty,  its  heroism,  its  earth-shak- 
ing humour,  and  its  heights  of  tragic  passion  and 
pathos,  to  a  place  in  our  memories,  and  a  home  in  our 
hearts."  It  will  not  do,  however,  for  (let  me  whis- 
per it)  who  reads  Morris's  poetry  today?  Has  he 
a  home  in  our  hearts?  Are  his  Norse  enthusiasms 
really  anything  to  us?  I  am  not  defending  our  gen- 
eration for  neglecting  Morris,  or  for  being  indifferent 
to  the  Norse  theogony,  of  which  he  was  a  prophet. 
Our  age  is  one  of  prose,  and  the  passion  of  prose  is 
justice — reasonable  and  regulated  justice.  Terrible 
beauty,  earth-shaking  humour,  tragic  passion,  and  so 
on — the  stuft  of  epic  poetry — are  relegated  nowadays 
to  the  police  court.  Moreover,  the  Norse  mythology 
is  not  only  "pagan"  in  the  sense  of  being  non-Christian, 
it  is  pagan  in  the  sense  of  being  sub-  as  much  as  pre- 
Christian,  differing  in  this  respect  from  the  Indian 
mythology  of  the  Mahabharata,  or  the  Egyptian  my- 
thology of  the  Book  of  the  Dead.  We  can  never  re- 
turn to  it  without  committing  an  act  of  regression, 
since  it  is  a  paganism  of  a  world  inferior  rather  than 
superior  to  the  "Christian"  world.  At  the  same  time, 
since  we  must  carry  all  our  sheaves  with  us,  in  order 
to  enjoy  the  complete  harvest  of  the  human  soul,  it  is 
necessary  not  to  drop  from  consciousness  the  heroic 


138  Readers  and  Writers 

past,  albeit  a  past  to  which  we  may  not  return.  Let 
it  be  enshrined  and  enjoyed  in  poetry  and  music  now 
that  it  is  no  longer  possible  in  life. 


* 
*   * 


The  Comedy  of  It 

Comedy  still  remains  a  secret  hid  from  the  English 
mind,  and  not  all  the  efforts  of  Mr.  John  Francis  Hope 
to  bring  it  into  popularity  will  succeed  where  the  prior 
efforts  of  Meredith  have  failed.  The  reason,  as  Mr. 
Hope  has  often  explained  it,  even  more  clearly  than 
Meredith,  is  not  only  that  the  spirit  of  Comedy  de- 
mands "a  society  of  cultivated  men  and  women, 
wherein  ideas  are  current  and  perceptions  quick" — a 
condition  certainly  not  now  existing — but  the  absence 
of  three  qualities,  each  of  which,  unfortunately, 
blooms  luxuriantly  among  us — "sentimentalism,  puri- 
tanism,  and  bacchanalianism."  Comedy,  the  play  of 
the  mind  about  real  ideas,  is  quite  incompatible  with 
any  one  of  these  three  vices.  If  you  sentimentalize, 
play  is  over,  and  equally  it  is  over  if  you  are  shocked, 
or  if  you  carry  the  suggested  humour  of  the  situation 
too  far.  But  one  of  these  things  the  ordinary  Eng- 
lishman or  woman  is  almost  bound  to  do;  and  thus  it 
comes  about  that  "play,"  the  sparkle  of  common  sense, 
is  so  rare  among  us. 

Meredith  certainly  worked  very  hard  to  instil 
Comedy  into  the  English  mind.  His  essay  is  a  classic, 
and  our  only  classic  on  the  subject.  And  he  may  be 


The  Comedy  of  It  139 

said  to  have  written  the  whole  of  his  novels  in  order 
to  illustrate  his  idea.  Meredith's  novels  are  much 
more  than  a  mirror  held  up  in  Nature;  they  are  a 
model  help  to  human  nature;  and,  from  this  point  of 
view,  they1  are  only  an  appendix  to  the  Essay  on 
Comedy.  The  serious  way  in  which  Meredith's  novels 
are  read,  however,  is  an  evidence  of  his  failure,  and 
it  would  be  interesting  to  hear  his  secret  comment  on 
the  critics  who  acclaim  him  as  the  grand  portrait- 
painter  of  women.  Did  Meredith  even  set  himself 
to  draw  a  woman?  Was  his  art  not  rather  to  "draw 
out"  a  woman  from  the  imperfect  society  his  times 
provided  him?  Were  not  his  "portraits,"  in  fact, 
constructive  criticisms  of  the  women  he  knew?  I  put 
these  opinions  into  interrogation  out  of  mere  courtesy, 
for  there  is  really  no  doubt  whatever  about  them. 
Meredith  drew  women  still  to  be,  as  he  hoped  they 
would  become. 

"To  love  comedy  you  must  know  the  real  world, 
and  know  men  and  women  well  enough  not  to  expect 
too  much  of  them,  though  you  may  still  hope  for 
good."  That  is  an  almost  complete  summary  of  the 
conditions  of  the  comic  spirit;  but  there  must  be  added 
the  "sense  of  society,"  the  social  sense,  which  is  quite 
as  important.  This  also  introduces  a  considerable 
difficulty  for  us,  since  if  "our  English  school  had  not 
clearly  imagined  society"  in  1877,  when  Meredith 
wrote,  it  is  less  than  ever  probable  today.  In  1877, 
such  people  of  intelligence  as  were  living  in  England, 
were  still  more  or  less  homogeneous  in  their  general 
views  about  life.  They  were  not  eighteenth  century 


140  Readers  and  Writers 

— the  century  of  our  highest  English  social  culture; 
but  they  were  not  yet  what  we  have  subsequently  be- 
come, discreet  and  warring  atoms  of  intellectuality. 
It  was  possible  when  Meredith  was  alive  for  a  group 
of  people  to  meet,  and  to  create  something  resembling 
a  salon.  The  hope  of  realizing  a  "salon  spirit"  was 
not  entirely  dead.  Today  nothing  is  more  improbable 
than  even  an  attempt  to  restore  a  salon.  Not  only 
would  nobody  undertake  to  do  it,  but  to  nobody  would 
it  occur  that  its  restoration  is  highly  desirable.  But 
the  salon  is,  as  it  were,  the  foyer  of  the  theatre  of 
Comedy,  as  the  theatre  of  Comedy  is  itself  the  foyer 
of  the  Civilized  Life  of  Brilliant  Common  Sense;  and 
if  we  cannot  re-create  a  salon  it  is  perfectly  certain 
that  the  greater  mysteries  are  beyond  us.  We  may 
continue,  however,  to  "hope  for  good,"  since  that  also 
is  an  essential  of  Comedy. 


* 


The  Epic  Serbs 

Kossovo:  the  Heroic  Songs  of  the  Serbs,  trans- 
lated by  Miss  Helen  Rootham,  has  now  been  published 
for  some  months.  If  there  is  any  "epic  sense"  alive 
in  this  country,  it  must  surely  be  gratified  by  the  ap- 
pearance of  these  Serbian  ballads,  which  are  much 
more  truly  epic  fragments  than  ballads  as  we  under- 
stand the  term.  In  the  ballad  proper  the  prevailing 
note  is  tragedy — sometimes  individual,  sometimes 
family,  sometimes  clan;  but  in  the  Serbian,  as  in  the 


The  Epic  Serbs  141 

Homeric,  the  tragedy  expressed  in  the  popular  poetry 
is  more  spacious  even  than  the  nation;  the  nation  be- 
comes the  race,  and  the  race  symbolizes  a  psycholog- 
ical power,  which  may  very  well  be  called  a  god — a 
suffering  god.  Grimm  said  of  these  ballads  that  there 
had  been  "nothing  since  Homer  to  compare  with  them; 
they  were  the  best  of  all  times  and  nations."  Goethe 
compared  them  to  the  Song  of  Songs.  Certainly 
there  is  something  Homeric  in  them;  and  since  they 
are  sung  today,  they  can  be  regarded  as  unique. 
Long  dwelling  on  them,  with  a  view  to  discovering 
their  innermost  secret,  convinces  me,  however,  that 
they  differ  from  the  Homeric  mood  in  their  compara- 
tive hopelessness.  Mr.  Baring  says  in  his  Introduc- 
tion that  these  Serbian  ballad-writers  "saw  the  world 
with  the  eyes  of  a  child  and  the  heart  of  a  man." 
"Child"  is  a  word  of  multiple  entente;  and  the  differ- 
ence between  the  Homeric  and  the  Serbian  "child- 
hood" is  that  the  latter  appears  doubtful  whether  it 
can  grow  up.  Homer,  we  know,  occasionally  let  fall 
a  sad  regret  that  his  splendid  heroes  should  still  be 
children;  and  in  the  plays  of  ^Eschylus  the  high  philo- 
sophical meditations  of  Homer  are  considerably 
elaborated.  But  in  these  Serbian  ballads  there  does 
not  appear  to  me  any  sign  of  the  mind  of  a  man,  how- 
ever much  of  the  heart  there  may  be.  No  Serbian 
Plato  will  ever  find  in  them  such  a  text  as  the  Greek 
Plato  found  in  Homer.  It  is  to  be  wondered  at. 
Serbia  has  always  been  on  the  frontier  of  European 
civilization,  and  perpetually  in  the  trenches.  Since 
1389  Serbia  has  been  in  unbroken  but  unsubmissive 


142  Readers  and  Writers 

captivity,  and  her  deliverance  from  alien  bondage  is 
only  an  event  of  yesterday.  But  if  the  elements  of 
the  future  are  contained  in  the  quintessence  of  these 
ballads,  there  is  no  sight  of  a  new  Athens  in  them. 


* 
*   * 


Ernest  Dowson 

Mr.  Arthur  Symons's  Introduction  to  the  reprinted 
Poems  and  Prose  of  the  late  Ernest  Dowson,  has  all 
the  characteristics  of  the  age  to  which  both  he  and 
Dowson  belongs.  It  is  delicately  appreciative,  and 
not  lacking  in  good  judgment.  Mr.  Symons  says,  for 
instance,  that  Dowson  was  small  enough  to  be  over- 
whelmed by  experiences  that  would  have  been  nour- 
ishing food  to  a  great  man.  But  the  style  and 
manner  of  passing  judgment  almost  completely  con- 
tradict the  matter  of  the  judgment  itself,  and  leave 
us  in  doubt  whether  Mr.  Symons  is  not  judging  against 
his  judgment.  Literary  criticism  does  not  need  to  be 
literature;  least  of  all  does  it  need  to  be  belles-lettres. 
Yet  Mr.  Arthur  Symons  and  his  whole  school  seem 
to  aim  at  precisely  this  effect,  that  of  writing  in  the 
same  style  as  the  work  criticized.  Thus  we  find  him 
saying  of  Dowson:  "all  the  fever  and  turmoil  and  the 
unattained  dreams  of  a  life  which  had  so  much  of 
the  swift,  disastrous,  and  suicidal  impetus  of  genius" — 
words  and  phrases  which  might  have  been  written  by 
Dowson  himself.  They  are  apologiastic  of  the  per- 


Ernest  Dowson  143 

son  when  what  we  ask  of  criticism  is  judgment  of  the 
quality  of  the  style,  and  in  the  unfortunate  identifi- 
cation of  genius  with  disaster  and  suicide  they  are 
almost  an  incentive  to  the  little  artists  to  trade  on 
their  neuroses.  I  do  not  know  whether  Mr.  Symons 
knew  Dowson  personally;  it  is  of  no  importance;  but 
his  bedside  manner  with  ailing  geniuses  would  have 
been  anything  but  tonic. 

It  is  symptomatic  of  Dowson's  state  of  mind, 
though  Mr.  Symons  misses  the  subtlety  of  it,  that  he 
was  always  repeating  Poe's  line :  "the  viol,  the  violet, 
and  the  vine."  A  special  affection  for  labials  and 
liquids  is  conclusive  evidence  of  minority,  not  to  say 
infantilism;  and  stylists  with  any  ambition  to  excel, 
and  to  develop  both  themselves  and  their  style,  will 
be  wise  to  watch  their  "v's"  and  "m's"  and  "1's,"  in 
fact,  their  labials  and  liquids  generally.  Dowson 
wallowed  in  liquids  and  labials  to  the  end  of  his  short 
life;  his  vocabulary  never  grew  up,  and  I  have  no 
doubt  that,  had  he  been  asked  to  quote  his  own  best 
lines,  he  would  have  pointed,  not  to  the  notorious 
"Cynara,"  which  is  sufficiently  pretty-pretty,  but  to 
these  lines,  in  which  he  came  as  near  to  Poe  as  origi- 
nality permits: — 

Violets  and  leaves  of  vine 
For   Love  that   lives   a   day. 

"One  is  essentially  of  the  autumn,"  he  wrote  of  him- 
self. But  that  is  not  true,  for  Dowson  was  not  ripe, 
but  (I  say  it  of  course  with  respect)  rotten.  He  re- 


144  Readers  and  Writers 

mained  in  the  cradle  sucking  sensations  long  after  he 
should  have  been  out  in  the  world  creating  sensations. 
Life  never  got  beyond  his  lips. 


*   * 


A  Sentimental  Excursion 

The  writers  of  the  Venture,  a  literary  magazine 
published  from  Bristol,  and  written  chiefly  by  members 
of  the  Postal  Service,  are  sincere  in  that  they  are 
manifestly  striving  to  acquire  a  good  English  style; 
and  they  are  modest  in  that  they  do  not  pretend  to 
have  attained  to  it.  Even  better,  and  unlike  so  many 
current  "stylists,"  they  do  not  say  that  the  unreachable 
grapes  are  sour,  while  those  only  which  they  can 
pluck  are  the  perfect  fruit;  in  other  words,  they  do 
not  try  to  pass  off  their  defects  as  new  beauties  of 
style.  Their  models  are  good,  and  their  exercises 
are  promising.  The  introductory  note  contains, 
however,  a  little  cant,  rather  out  of  key  with  the  pre- 
vailing mood  of  the  journal.  It  demands  "stalwart 
criticism,"  not  for  itself  only,  but  for  literature  in 
general.  The  London  Mercury  appeared  before  the 
world  in  the  same  austere  attitude,  calling  in  pro- 
phetic tones  for  sterner  criticism,  more  out-spoken 
criticism,  criticism  that  should  both  say  and  mean 
something,  criticism,  in  short,  of  the  kind  which  has 
for  years  ensured  the  ostracism  of  precisely  that  kind 
of  critic.  It  is  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  de- 
mand such  criticism,  and  very  popular  on  one  condition 


A  Sentimental  Excursion         145 

— that  it  be  never  actually  provided.  For  the  fact 
is  that  the  criticism  in  question  is  really  killing;  and 
how  many  of  those  who  ask  for  stern  criticism  would 
welcome  their  own  extinction? 

Special  attention  is  directed  to  the  longish  poem 
by  Mr.  Francis  Andrews.  It  is  entitled  "Mother," 
and  the  opening  stanza  is  as  follows: — 

You  can  see  from  the  gate  which  once  enclosed  my  world 
The  tinted  woods  o'  the  hill  and  the  white  road  wending, 
And  among  the  nearer  boughs  wherein  my  stars  were  hung 
The  blown  and  shifting  wraith  of  the  blue  smoke  curled. 

Let  us  stop  at  that  and  collect  our  impressions.  It 
is  a  very  dangerous  subject  that  Mr.  Andrews  has 
chosen.  The  temptation  to  indulge  in  "sob-stuff"  in 
reflecting  on  "Mother,"  is  well-nigh  irresistible,  since 
the  sentiment  goes  back  to  the  childhood  not  only  of 
the  individual,  but  of  the  race,  and  probably  earlier. 
It  is  almost  inextricably  mingled  with  the  tears  of 
things.  But  tears  are  not  a  proper  accompaniment 
of  poetry  or  of  beauty.  The  mission  of  Art  is  to  dry  all 
tears,  and  the  utmost  severity  and  serenity  are  needed 
in  dealing  with  a  profoundly  emotional  subject  exactly 
to  keep  the  tears  from  welling  into  it.  That  Mr. 
Andrews  has  not  succeeded  is  evident  from  the  opening 
stanza  which  I  have  just  quoted.  It  is  almost 
drenched  with  sentiment.  Listen  to  the  rhythm 
which  is  nearly  a  lullably  in  reverie,  and  let  us  ask 
ourselves  whether  it  is,  not  calculated,  quite  apart 
from  the  words,  to  throw  the  reader  backwards  into 
his  mother's  arms.  "Which  once  enclosed  my 


146  Readers  and  Writers 

world,"  "and  the  white  road  wending,"  "whereon 
my  stars  were  hung,"  "the  blown  and  shifting  wraith 
of  blue  smoke  curled" — these  are  sentimental  rhythms, 
and  their  inevitable  effect  is  to  induce  a  reverie  of 
the  past  rather  than  a  meditation  or  contemplation 
of  the  future.  The  mood  is  backward-looking,  and 
not  forward-looking,  an  indulgence  and  not  an  effort 
of  spirit.  It  is  quite  in  accordance  with  the  diagnosis 
that  a  concluding  stanza  of  the  poem  should  repeat 
the  opening  stanza,  since  there  is  no  release  in  a  mood 
of  this  kind.  In  great  reveries  it  will  be  observed 
that  the  movement  is  forward  and  upward.  The 
action  starts  from  a  profound  sentiment,  but  it  works 
its  way  upward  to  a  triumphant  assertion  of  spiritual 
realization.  Look,  for  instance,  at  Lycldas  or 
Adonals,  both  sentimental  in  origin,  but  both  exalted 
in  conclusion.  There  the  song  springs  from  a  dewy 
bed,  drenched  with  tears,  but  it  mounts  and  mounts 
until  it  ends  in  the  sky.  Mr.  Andrews  keeps  well  to 
the  ground,  and,  as  I  have  said,  his  concluding  stanza 
is  only  a  slight  variation  of  the  prelude.  The  in- 
fluence of  Kipling  is  to  be  discerned  at  work, 
especially  Kipling's  "Envoi,"  beginning,  "There's  a 
whisper  down  the  field."  Kipling  is  another  of  the 
writer's  whose  sentiment  is  still  tied  to  his  mother's 
apron-strings;  and  his  "Envoi"  and  "Mother  o'  Mine" 
are  almost  as  poisonous  to  poetry  as  Meredith's  "Love 
in  the  Valley."  We  need  not  be  averse  to  sentiment 
as  such,  but  the  most  careful  discrimination  between 
the  nest  and  the  sky  is  essential  to  an  aesthetic  use 


The  Newest  Testament  147 

of  it.     Let  us  start  in  sentiment,  by  all  means,  but 
let  us  rise  from  it  as  quickly  as  possible. 


*** 


The  Newest  Testament 

Various  attempts  have  been  made  from  time  to  time 
to  "render"  the  New  Testament  into  colloquial 
English  in  order  to  bring  it  "up-to-date."  None  of 
these,  we  may  congratulate  ourselves,  has  so  far  been 
more  than  a  nine  days'  sensation,  and  even  less  than 
that  length  of  life  is  destined  for  the  latest  attempt, 
Sayings  and  Stories,  a  translation  into  "colloquial 
English"  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  and  some 
Parables.  The  Yates  Professor  of  New  Testament 
Greek  and  Exegesis  at  Mansfield  College  gives  us 
his  assurance  that  however  "startlingly  unlike  the 
familiar  versions"  these  translations  by  Mr.  Hoare 
may  be,  they  are  nevertheless  "actual  translations  and 
not  mere  paraphrases,"  and  he  commends  the  "style" 
to  the  "candid  judgment  of  the  reader."  The  prose 
sections,  in  particular,  he  says,  are  "curiously  reminis- 
cent" of  the  "homely  speech  in  which  the  sayings  of 
Jesus  Christ  have  been  preserved."  It  may  be  so, 
but  then,  again,  it  may  not;  since,  after  all,  it  is  not 
a  question  of  reproducing  in  colloquial  English  the 
colloquial  Greek  of  the  original,  but  a  question  rather 
of  reproducing  in  English  the  meaning  of  the  Gospel 
writers;  and  this  may  very  well  require,  not  colloquial 
English,  but  the  English  vernacular  in  its  highest  de- 


148  Readers  and  Writers 

gree  of  purity,  simplicity,  and  grandeur.  I  am  not 
sufficiently  acquainted  with  the  popular  Greek  in  which 
much  of  the  New  Testament  was  written  to  pass  a 
candid  judgment  on  its  quality  as  a  Greek  style,  but 
if  the  aim  of  the  original  writers  was  the  grand  style 
simple — as  it  must  have  been — whether  they  achieved 
it  or  not,  it  is  indubitably  achieved  in  the  English  of 
the  authorized  translation.  Assuming  the  original, 
in  fact,  to  be  "faithfully"  represented  in  the  colloquial 
English  of  Mr.  Hoare,  I  unhesitatingly  say  that  the 
English  of  the  authorized  translation  is  nearer  the 
spirit  of  the  original  than  the  present  translation, 
and,  in  that  sense,  more  fully  faithful  to  the  intentions 
of  the  original  authors. 

It  would  be  tedious  to  cite  more  than  one  example, 
and  I  will  take  it  in  the  very  first  sentence  of  Mr. 
Hoare's  translation.  "What  joy,"  he  says,  "for 
those  with  the  poor  man's  feelings !  Heaven's  Em- 
pire is  for  them,"  the  authorized  translation  of  which 
is  too  familiar  to  need  quotation.  I  do  not  see  what 
is  gained,  setting  aside  the  cost  by  the  substitution  of 
the  exclamatory  "What  joy  .  .  ."  for  the  ecstatic 
affirmation,  "Blessed  are  the  poor."  Why  again, 
"the  poor  man,"  and,  after  that,  the  "poor  man's 
feelings"?  Why  also  "Heaven's  Empire"  instead  of 
"the  Kingdom  of  Heaven";  and  why  "is  for  them" 
instead  of  "theirs  is"?  The  gain,  even  literally,  is 
imperceptible,  and  in  cost  a  world  of  meaning  has 
been  sacrificed.  "Blessed"  is  an  incomparably  more 
spiritual  word  than  "joy" — in  English,  at  any  rate, 
whatever  their  respective  originals  may  indicate;  and 


The  Newest  Testament  149 

there  is  a  plane  of  difference  between  an  incontinent 
ejaculation  such  as  "What  joy,"  which  resembles 
"What  fun,"  and  has  in  view  rather  a  prospect  than 
a  fact — and  the  serene  and  confident  utterance  of  an 
assured  truth.  Further,  and  again  without  regard  to 
the  literal  original,  "a  poor  man's  feelings"  must  be 
miles  away  from  the  intention  of  the  original  authors, 
since  it  definitely  conveys  to  us  associations  derived 
from  social  surroundings,  social  reform,  and  what  not. 
Was  this  the  intention  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount, 
the  very  location  of  which  symbolized  a  state  of  mind 
above  that  of  the  dwellers  in  the  plain  of  common  life? 
Was  it  a  socialist  or  communist  discourse?  If  not, 
the  "poor  man's  feelings,"  in  our  English  colloquial 
sense,  is  utterly  out  of  place,  and  the  original  must 
have  meant  something  symbolically  different.  The 
substitution,  again,  of  "Heaven's  Empire"  for  the 
"Kingdom  of  Heaven"  may  be,  as  Professor  Dodd 
assures  us,  a  mere  correct  literal  translation  of  the 
original  phrase;  but  only  a  literary  barbarian  can 
contemplate  it  without  grieving  over  the  lost  worlds 
of  meaning.  What  is  the  prospect  of  an  "Empire," 
even  Heaven's  Empire,  to  us  today?  As  certainly 
as  the  phrase  "Kingdom  of  Heaven"  has  come  to 
mean,  in  English,  a  state  of  beatitude,  the  reversion 
to  an  "Empire"  marks  the  decline  of  that  state  to 
one  of  outward  pomp  and  circumstance.  The  spir- 
itual meaning  which  must  have  characterized  the 
intention  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  completely 
sacrificed  in  the  substitution  of  Empire  for  Kingdom. 
The  volume  is  published  by  the  "Congregational 


150  Readers  and  Writers 

Union  of  England  and  Wales,"  and  it  serves  to  in- 
dicate the  depths  to  which  Nonconformist  taste  can 
sink.  We  only  need  now  this  "colloquial  English" 
version  in  the  unu  speling"  to  touch  bottom. 


*   * 


Nothing  Foreign 

It  is  better  for  a  nation  to  "import"  art  than  to  go 
without  it  altogether;  and  that  it  is  the  duty  of  its 
critics  to  stimulate  home-production  by  importing  as 
many  as  possible  of  the  best  foreign  models.  .That 
home-production  may  fail  to  find  itself  encouraged  to 
the  point  of  creation  is  perfectly  possible;  inspiration 
may  continue  to  be  wanting;  but  of  the  two  states  of 
no  home-production  and  no  imports  and  no  home- 
production  and  imports,  the  latter  is  to  be  preferred. 

"Foreign"  is  a  word  that  should  be  employed  with 
increasing  discrimination,  and,  most  of  all,  by  English 
writers.  There  is  an  English  genius  the  perfect 
flower  of  which  we  have  still  to  see;  for  perfect 
English  has  never  yet  been  written.  But  nothing 
foreign  ought  to  be  alien  to  a  race  as  universal  in 
character  and  mentality  as  the  English;  and  in  the  end, 
the  perfection  of  the  English  genius  is  only  possible 
in  a  spiritual  synthesis  of  all  the  cultures  of  the  world. 
Two  tendencies  equal  and  opposite  are  at  work  in  this 
direction,  and  have  always  been  in  English  history. 
On  the  one  side,  we  find  an  ever-present  tendency 
towards  cosmopolitanism,  an  excess  of  which  would 


Psycho-analysis  151 

certainly  result  in  the  complete  loss  of  essential 
national  characteristics.  On  the  other  side,  and 
usually  balancing  the  first,  we  find  an  ever-present 
tendency  towards  insularity  and  aesthetic  chauvinism, 
the  excess  of  which  would  undoubtedly  result  in  a 
caricature  of  the  English  genius — the  development  of 
idiosyncrasies  in  place  of  style.  Somewhere  between 
these  two  tendencies  the  critic  of  English  art  must  fix 
his  seat,  in  order  that  his  judgment  may  determine,  as 
far  as  possible,  the  perfect  resultant  of  the  blend  of 
opposites.  It  is  a  matter,  too,  of  time  as  well  as  of 
forms  of  culture.  Not  only  are  not  all  times  alike, 
but  there  is  a  time  for  import  and  a  time  for  export 
and  a  time  for  "protection";  but,  equally,  there  is 
room  for  discrimination  in  the  kind  of  art  that  may 
wisely  be  imported  or  exported.  In  general,  we 
should  import  only  what  we  need  and  export  only 
what  other  nations  need,  and  thus,  in  the  old  mediaeval 
sense,  traffic  in  treasure.  Thus  guarded,  nothing  but 
good  can  come  of  the  greatest  possible  international 
commerce  of  the  arts. 


* 

*   * 


Psycho- Analysis 

Psycho-analysis  is  not  the  last  word  in  psychological 
method;  and  a  great  deal  more  of  experiment  is 
needed.  Freud's  theory  of  dreams,  for  instance,  is 
excellent  pioneer  work  in  a  field  hitherto  left  more 
or  less  uncultivated,  but  it  is  very  far  from  being  ex- 


152  Readers  and  Writers 

haustively  explanatory  of  the  facts.  Suppose  it  were 
possible  to  control  dreams — in  other  words,  to  dream 
of  what  you  will — would  not  the  theory  of  Freud 
that  dreams  are  subconscious  wish-fulfilments  stand 
in  need  of  amendment?  But  to  control  dreams  is 
not  an  utter  impossibility.  Sufficient  experimental 
work  has  been  done  in  this  direction  to  prove  that  the 
gate  of  dreams  is  open  to  the  intelligent  will.  And 
there  is  warrant  for  the  attempt  in  a  good  deal  of 
mystical  literature.  I  was  reading  only  recently  the 
poems  of  Vaughan  the  Silurist,  and  what  should  I 
come  across  but  the  following  passage : 

Being  laid  and  dress'd  for  sleep,  close  not  thy  eyes 
Up  with  the  curtains;   give  thy  soul  the  wing 
In  some  good  thoughts;  so  when  the  day  shall  rise 
And  thou  unrak'st  thy  fire,  those  sparks  will  bring 
New  flames;   besides  where  these  lodge,  vain  heats  mourn 
And  die;   that  bush  where  God  is  shall  not  burn. 

Vaughan's  lines  are  not  great  poetry,  but  they  contain 
a  useful  psychological  hint. 

*   * 


Psycho-Analysis  and  the  Mysteries 

It  would  be  unwise  to  make  a  dogma  of  any  of  the 
present  conclusions  of  psycho-analysis.  As  a  means 
of  examining  the  contents  of  the  subconscious,  psycho- 
analysis is  an  instrument  of  the  highest  value,  but  in 
"the  interpretation  of  what  it  finds  there,  and  in  the 
conclusions  it  draws  as  to  their  origin — how  the  apple 


Psycho-Analysis  and  the  Mysteries  153 
got  into  the  dumpling,  in  fact — psycho-analysis  re- 
quires to  be  checked  by  all  the  knowledge  we  have  at 
our  command.  Mr.  Mead  has  raised  the  question 
of  origins,  but  it  is  just  as  easy  to  raise  the  question 
of  interpretation.  I  am  not  satisfied  that  the  inter- 
pretation placed  by  Jung  on  myths  is  any  more  than 
correct  as  far  as  it  goes,  and  I  am  disposed  to  think 
that  it  does  not  go  far  enough.  His  reduction,  for 
example,  of  a  whole  group  of  myths  to  the  "incest" 
motive,  appears  to  me,  even  in  the  light  of  his  defi- 
nition of  incest  as  the  "backward  urge  into  child- 
hood," to  give  us  only  a  partial  truth,  an  aspect  of 
truth.  For  there  is  a  sense  in  which  an  "urge  into 
childhood"  is  not  backward  but  forward,  not  a  re- 
gression into  an  old,  but  a  progression  into  a  new 
childhood.  "Unless  ye  become  as  little  children,  ye 
can  in  no  wise  enter  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven."  "In- 
cest" is  a  strictly  improper  term  to  apply  to  such  a 
transformation;  the  new  birth  might  suit  the  case 
better.  Mr.  Mead  takes  the  same  view.  The  inter- 
pretations of  psycho-analysis  carry  us  back,  he  sug- 
gests, to  the  lesser  mysteries;  but  they  need  to  be 
"elevated"  in  the  Thomist  sense  in  order  to  carry  us 
back  to  the  greater.  So  long  as  it  confines  itself  to 
the  "body"  psycho-analysis  must  plainly  be  confined  to 
the  lesser  mysteries,  for  the  lesser  mysteries  are  all 
concerned  with  generation.  The  greater  mysteries 
are  concerned  with  regeneration,  and,  hence,  with  the 
"soul";  and  even  if  we  assume  the  "soul"  to  require 
a  body,  we  are  outside  the  region  of  ordinary  genera- 
tion if  that  body  is  not  the  physical  body.  The  psy- 


154  Readers  and  Writers 

cho-analytic  interpretation  suffers  from  this  confine- 
ment of  its  text  to  the  physical  body,  since  "the  genuine 
myth  has  first  and  foremost  to  do  with  the  life  of 
the  soul." 

Another  caution  to  remember  is  that  reality  cannot 
be  grasped  with  one  faculty  or  with  several;  it  requires 
them  all.  Only  the  whole  can  grasp  the  whole.  For 
this  reason  it  is  impossible  to  "think"  reality;  for 
though  the  object  of  thought  may  be  reality,  all  reality 
is  not  to  be  thought.  Similarly,  it  is  impossible  to 
"feel"  or  to  "will"  or  to  "sense"  reality  completely. 
Each  of  these  modes  of  experiencing  reality  reports 
us  only  a  mode  of  reality,  and  not  the  whole  of  it. 
Before  we  can  say  certainly  that  a  thing  is  true — be- 
fore, that  is,  we  can  affirm  a  reality — it  must  not  only 
think  true,  but  feel  true,  sense  true,  and  do  true. 
The  pragmatic  criterion  that  reports  a  thing  to  be  true 
because  it  works  may  be  contradicted  by  the  Intel- 
lectual criterion  that  reports  a  thing  to  be  true  because 
it  "thinks"  true;  and  when  these  both  agree  in  their 
report,  their  common  conclusion  may  fail  to  be  con- 
firmed by  the  criterion  of  feeling  that  reports  a  thing 
to  be  true  when  it  "feels"  true.  It  is  from  an  ap- 
preciation of  the  many-sided  nature  of  truth,  and, 
consequently  from  an  appreciation  of  the  many  facul- 
ties required  to  grasp  it,  that  the  value  set  by  the 
world  on  common  sense  is  derived.  For  common 
sense  is  the  community  of  the  senses  or  faculties;  in 
its  outcome  it  is  the  agreement  of  their  reports.  A 
thing  is  said  to  be  common  sense  when  it  satisfies  the 
heart,  the  mind,  the  emotion,  and  all  the  senses;  when, 


Gently  with  Psycho-Analysis  155 
in  fact,  it  satisfies  all  our  various  criteria  of  reality. 
Otherwise  a  statement  may  be  logical,  it  may  be 
pleasing,  it  may  be  practical,  it  may  be  obvious;  but 
only  when  it  is.  all  is  it  common  sense. 

But  can  we,  with  only  our  present  faculties,  however 
developed  and  harmonized,  ever  arrive  at  reality? 
It  may  be  that  in  the  natural  order  of  things,  humanity 
implies  by  definition  a  certain  state  of  ignorance,  and 
that  this  state  is  only  to  be  transcended  by  the  over- 
passing of  the  "human"  condition.  Psycho-analysis 
is  still  only  at  the  beginning  of  its  discoveries,  but 
on  the  very  threshold  we  are  met  by  the  problem  of 
the  nascent  or  germinal  faculties  of  the  mind.  Are 
there  in  the  subconscious  "yearning  to  mix  themselves 
with  life,"  faculties  for  which  "humanity"  has  not  yet 
developed  end-organs?  If  this  be  so,  as  our  fathers 
have  told  us,  the  next  step  in  evolution  is  to  develop 
them. 

*** 

Gently  with  Psycho-Analysis 

I  am  doubtful  whether  we  have  sufficiently  devel- 
oped the  ideas  of  Psycho-analysis  to  make  a  fruitful 
parallel  possible  between  them  and  the  ideas  contained 
in  Patanjali.  Psycho-analysis,  as  the  name  indicates, 
is  more  concerned  with  analysis  than  with  synthesis, 
and  "Yoga,"  whose  dominant  idea  is  re-union  or  syn- 
thesis, appears  to  be  rather  a  complement  than  an 
analogue  of  Psycho-analysis  in  the  broad  sense.  Take, 


156  Readers  and  Writers 

for  example,  the  idea  of  Yoga  as  a  means  to  the  re- 
union of  the  individual  with  the  world-soul:  "Thou 
art  That;  Thou  shalt  become  That."  According  to 
Jung,  this  attempt  at  re-union  may  be  nothing  more 
than  a  megalomaniac  regressive  introversion,  repre- 
senting on  a  grand  scale  a  return  to  the  mother  and 
infantilism.  Since  it  is  separation  from  the  mother 
(actual  and  metaphorical),  that,  in  Jung's  view, 
creates  the  basis  of  consciousness;  any  attempt  to  be- 
come re-united  with  the  "mother"  is  an  act  of  regres- 
sion. It  is  obvious  from  this  dissonance  of  doctrine 
that  Yoga  and  Psycho-analysis  have  not  as  yet  dis- 
covered any  profound  common  ground;  in  fact,  in 
some  respects  they  appear  to  be  opposed. 

1  count  myself  among  the  increasing  number  of 
enthusiastic  students  of  psycho-analysis.  It  is  the 
hopeful  science  of  the  dawning  era.  No  new  era  ap- 
pears to  me  to  be  possible  without  it,  and  such  a  work 
as  Dr.  Ernest  Jones's  Psycho- Analysis  is  one  of  the 
books  most  worth  buying  at  the  present  time.  But 
it  is  elsewhere  that  I  find  the  best  justification  for  my 
enthusiasm,  in  these  words  from  an  old  Hermetic  text: 
"The  beginning  of  perfection  is  gnosis  of  man;  but 
gnosis  of  God  is  perfected  perfection."  Psycho- 
analysis thus  appears  to  be  the  beginning  of  the  gnosis 
of  man,  and,  in  this  sense,  the  beginning  of  perfection. 
But  it  is  only  the  beginning.  Mere  morality,  how- 
ever psychological,  is  no  substitute  for  religion;  and 
the  most  profoundly  and  sincerely  moral  of  men — 
Ibsen,  for  example — end  in  a  state  of  despair  unless 
at  the  point  at  which  their  morality  gives  out,  religion 


A  Cambridge  "Cocoon"          157 

of  some  kind  comes  to  their  aid.  Psycho-analysis,  I 
think  it  will  be  found,  is  doomed,  while  it  remains 
analysis,  to  end  in  the  same  state  of  despair.  It  will 
teach  us  all  there  is  to  be  known  about  the  nature  of 
man;  but  the  gnosis  of  man  is  not  satisfying.  For 
it  is  only  thereafter  and  when  man  is  transcended  as 
an  object  of  gnosis  that  perfected  perfection  is  pos- 
sible. I  would  not,  however,  hasten  by  a  single 
impatient  step  this  second  and  completing  phase  of 
the  process  of  our  learning.  The  gnosis  of  man  is 
necessary  to  the  gnosis  of  God,  and  God  can  well  look 
after  Himself  and  bide  our  time.  Furthermore,  a 
premature  attempt  to  know  God  before  we  are  initi- 
ated into  the  mysteries  of  the  gnosis  of  man  must  be 
heavily  paid  for.  Religion  without  humanity  is  more 
dangerous  than  humanity  without  religion.  Let  us 
then  settle  down  with  concentrated  attention  to  the 
problem  before  us,  the  material  and  method  of  which 
are  to  be  found  in  psycho-analysis.  We  shall  be  able 
to  afford  to  whistle  when  we  are  through  that  wood. 


*  * 


A  Cambridge  "Cocoon" 

The  new  Cambridge  magazine,  The  Cocoon,  cannot 
be  regarded  as  superfluous,  the  editors  suggest,  since 
its  point  of  view  is  unique.  It  is  not  written  by  "theo- 
logical" minds  that  "estimate  affairs  in  relation  to 
unchangeable  dogmas  and  fixed  beliefs,"  but  by  minds 
that  hold  that  things  "are  capable  of  more  than  one 


158  Readers  and  Writers 

truthful  interpretation."  The  second  of  these  conten- 
tions is  true  enough,  but,  unfortunately,  the  new  in- 
terpretations of  The  Cocoon,  however  truthful,  are 
trivial.  Age,  we  are  told,  sees  the  Moon  as  just  a 
"heavenly  body";  whereas  the  youth  who  spin  The 
Cocoon  see  the  Moon  as  "a  wonderful  cheese"  or  a 
prehistoric  coin.  Age,  again,  looks  at  the  Great 
Pyramid  and  interprets  it  as  a  pyramidal  structure; 
but  our  spinning  youth  interpret  it  as  a  "colossal  and 
awe-inspiring  cube,"  with  emphasis  on  the  awe.  The 
difference  between  the  interpretations  is,  to  my  mind, 
all  in  favour  of  age.  It  may  be  true  that  the  Moon  is 
translatable  in  terms  of  cheese,  and  the  Great  Pyramid 
may  really  be  a  cube,  but  the  interpretations  are  with- 
out interest  or  value.  If  The  Cocoon  had  said  that 
the  Moon  might  conceivably  be  the  Devil,  or  the 
Great  Pyramids  the  psychic  meeting-place  of  the 
Rosicrucians,  the  new  "interpretation"  might  have  had 
some  interest.  As  it  is,  we  are  back  in  the  nursery, 
and  not  by  any  means  in  the  nursery  of  the  race.  The 
earlier  editorial  affirmation  is  not  even  sense,  but  a 
contradiction  of  sense.  "To  estimate  affairs  in  re- 
lation to  unchangeable  dogmas  and  fixity  of  things 
as  they  are."  When  we  find  only  means  of  estimating 
at  all.  Things  are  so  and  so,  and  the  unchangeability 
of  dogma  and  fixity  of  belief  are  determined,  or  should 
be,  by  the  corresponding  unchangeability  and  fixity 
of  things  as  they  are.  When  we  find  that  the  nature 
of  things  changes  arbitrarily  from  day  to  day,  we  may 
consider  the  advisability  of  changing  our  belief  that 
it  is  fixed  as  rapidly  as  nature  itself  is  transformed. 


A  Cambridge  "Cocoon"          159 

Otherwise,  if  anything  we  say  is  to  be  "true,"  it  must 
be  because  there  is  a  fixed  and  unchangeable  nature 
to  which  our  dogmas  and  beliefs  refer.  The  alterna- 
tive is  not  youth  and  imagination  and  "other  truthful 
interpretations  of  things,"  it  is  nursery  chatter  about 
cheese  and  pyramidal  cubes. 

Pass  the  articles  on  Balzac  and  D'Annunzio,  both 
of  which  might  have  been  written  by  Old  Age  or  even 
Middle  Age,  and  let  us  see  how  the  state  of  mind 
calling  itself  Youth  deal  with  history.  Remember 
that  Cambridge,  where  the  Cocoons  come  from,  re- 
gards itself  as  uthe  nursery  of  the  nation";  and  then 
listen  to  Mr.  L.  J.  Cheney,  no  doubt  one  of  our  future 
representatives  on  the  World-League,  preparing  his 
program.  "It  is  stupid,"  he  says,  "to  write  history 
or  to  study  history  on  the  assumption  that  we  Western 
Europeans  are  the  salt  of  the  earth."  And  Mr.  H. 
Y.  Oulsham,  on  the  same  subject,  remarks  that  "we 
must  keep  the  sociological  aim  of  history  in  sight"; 
.  .  .  "the  be-all  and  end-all  of  history  is  sociology." 
No  wonder  the  Manchester  Guardian — the  guardian, 
that  is  to  say,  of  Manchester — found  The  Cocoon  so 
promising,  for  the  opinions  expressed  by  Mr.  Cheney 
and  Mr.  Oulsham  are  embryos  of  Manchester  Guar- 
dian "leaders,"  they  are  so  cosmopolitan  and  so  hu- 
manitarian. Apart,  however,  from  their  extreme 
Age,  bordering  on  decrepitude,  I  find  in  them  not 
even  an  unimportant  "truthful  interpretation."  It  is 
not  true  that  sociology  is  the  be-all  and  end-all  of 
history  as  it  ought  to  be  written;  and  to  deny,  in  the 
name  of  history,  that  Western  Europe  is  the  salt 


160  Readers  and  Writers 

of  the  earth  (however  it  may  have  lost  its  sa- 
vour) is  just  to  deny  and  repudiate  European  world- 
responsibility.  Things,  again,  are  so  and  so,  and 
not  otherwise,  let  Youth  interpret  them  as  it  will. 
Europe  is  the  responsible  mind  of  the  world,  and  the 
be-all  and  end-all  of  history  is  the  fulfilment  of  a 
world-purpose  whose  objective  is  more  than  merely 
human  sociology.  If  the  "nursery  of  the  nation"  has 
a  different  interpretation,  the  nursery  of  the  nation  is 
wrong. 

The  Cocoon  is  under  the  impression  that  there  is 
something  valuable  in  Youth  in  years;  that  Youth  in 
years  is  the  only  kind  of  Youth ;  that  Youth  in  years  is 
Youth  indeed.  Our  first  birth,  however,  is  only  a 
sleep  and  a  forgetting,  and  real  Youth  comes  only 
after  the  second-birth.  The  once-born  are  creatures 
of  pure  circumstance,  owing  their  youth  to  the  accident 
of  time  alone;  but  the  twice-born  are  self-creations 
defying  time;  they  never  grow  old,  though  they  are 
always  growing  up.  The  Cocoon  fairly  describes 
Youth  as  "a  condition  of  energy  and  receptiveness" ; 
but  is  Youth  in  years  necessarily  of  that  kind?  As 
for  receptiveness,  we  have  already  seen  that  the 
"historians"  of  the  "nursery  of  the  nation"  either 
hark  back  or  hark  forward  to  ideas  long  since  dead. 
And  as  for  "energy,"  barring  its  animal  manifestation 
in  sport,  the  highest  culture  demands  the  highest  con- 
centration of  energy,  and  where  shall  we  find  it  but 
in  the  twice-born?  Whoever  can  make  a  turn  upon 
himself  and  his  habits  of  thought  is  young,  whatever 
his  years.  On  the  other  hand,  whoever  cannot  be 


A  Cambridge  "Cocoon"          161 

"bothered"  to  think  afresh,  but  contents  himself  with 
what  he  used  to  think  is  old  and  lacking  in  energy, 
whatever  his  years  or  his  blues. 

It  is  the  fate  of  the  once-born  to  become  pessimistic 
as  they  grow  old,  as  it  is  the  privilege  of  the  twice-born 
to  increase  in  hope  as  they  wax  in  youth.  One  of  our 
Cocoonists,  therefore,  must  be  prematurely  old  in  the 
former  sense,  since  he  lifts  up  his  lamentation  that 
"the  beauty  of  English  prose  is  already  mainly  a 
thing  of  the  past."  It  is  not  a  sentiment  for  "the 
nursery  of  the  nation,"  and  it  is  altogether  untrue. 
Beautiful  English  prose  has  certainly  been  written,  but 
the  best  is  yet  to  be.  Beautiful  qualities  of  English 
prose  we  have  certainly  had  revealed  to  us  in  abun- 
dance, and  some  of  our  greatest  writers  have  succeeded 
in  making  an  anthology  in  their  style  of  two  or  three 
or  even  four  of  them;  but  an  English  prose  with  all 
its  known  qualities  harmonized  and  synthesized  in  a 
single  style  is  a  thing  of  the  future  and  not  of  the  past. 
There  are  qualities  in  English  still  unrevealed.  A 
great  deal  of  "energy,"  however,  will  be  necessary  to 
such  a  synthesis.  Its  creator  must  be  not  only  twice- 
born,  but,  as  the  Mahabharata  says  of  Indian  sages, 
"blazing  with  spiritual  energy,"  for  the  fire  of  imagina- 
tion to  fuse  all  the  qualities  of  English  prose  into  a 
style  is  too  intense  for  ordinary  mortals. 


*% 


1 62  Readers  and  Writers 

An  Oxford  Miscellany 

A  Queen's  College  Miscellany  is  filially  dedicated 
to  Walter  Pater  and  Ernest  Dowson,  both  of  whom, 
it  seems,  were  Queen's  men  in  their  day.  Still  another 
association  with  these  writers  is  sought  in  the  com- 
parison of  the  college  coterie  from  which  each  arose 
with  the  group  responsible  for  the  present  miscellany. 
Something  of  the  nature  of  a  cult  is  indicated;  and  I 
take  it  that  the  various  items  of  the  miscellany  are 
"corporate"  as  well  as  individual.  The  fore-word 
says  as  much.  In  a  vocabulary  that  seems  most  om- 
inous for  literature,  we  are  referred  to  a  "literary 
team"  whose  "output"  is  here  presented,  and  to  an 
attempt  to  "prove  that  team-work  is  possible  in  prose 
and  poetry."  And  the  miscellany  is  the  first  "har- 
vest" of  "the  refined  product."  My  opinion  of 
"team-work"  is  certainly  that  it  is  possible  both  in 
prose  and  poetry.  No  individual  has  ever  by  him- 
self written  either  great  prose  or  great  poetry,  and 
the  greatest  literary  works  of  the  world,  not  excepting 
Shakespeare,  are  of  anonymous — that  is  to  say,  of 
collective — authorship.  The  elevation  of  the  group- 
consciousness,  however,  is  everything,  and  I  need  not 
remark  that  a  group  whose  highest  aim  is  to  emulate 
Pater  and  Dowson,  and  whose  considered  "foreword" 
contains  such  terminological  ineptitudes  as  "team- 
work," "output,"  and  the  "harvest"  of  a  "refined 
product,"  is  not  yet  upon  a  very  high  plane  of 
discourse. 

* 
*  * 


The  Impotence  of  Satire          163 
The  Impotence  of  Satire 

A  correspondent  has  made  the  admirable  sug- 
gestion that  a  new  Don  Quixote  be  written  to  slay  the 
dragon  of  Capitalism  with  the  pen  of  satire.  The 
suggestion  is  unconditionally  free;  no  acknowledgment 
of  its  source  need  be  made;  but  anybody  is  at  liberty 
to  begin  on  the  work  at  once.  Some  excellent  argu- 
ments are  adduced  why  the  work  should  be  under- 
taken. Capitalism  has  long  troubled  the  land,  and 
its  evils  are  generally  admitted.  Reason  has  failed 
to  make  any  impression  on  the  beast,  and  sentiment 
appears  almost  to  be  its  favourite  food.  Satire, 
therefore,  is  plainly  indicated  as  the  appropriate 
weapon,  and  at  its  crack,  my  correspondent  suggests, 
the  beast  would  dissolve  into  nothing  amidst  universal 
laughter.  What  more  need  be  said  but  "Cervantes, 
forward!"? 

Unfortunately  my  correspondent  proceeds  to 
weaken  his  appeal  by  affirming  that  Cervantes  him- 
self had  Capitalism  in  his  mind  when  writing  certain 
chapters  of  the  First  Book  of  Don  Quixote.  In  44 
and  45  it  appears  to  me,  he  says,  that  Don  Quixote's 
identity  as  a  capitalist  is  undoubted.  Sancho  Panza's 
identity  with  the  mass  of  Labour  is  equally  undoubted; 
and  the  middle  classes  are  represented  by  a  number  of 
ladies  and  gentlemen,  a  canon,  a  judge,  and  a  doctor. 
These  chapters  standing  by  themselves  would  be  a 
good  allegorical  explanation  of  the  present  financial 
position.  But  why  of  the  "present"  position,  if  satire 


164  Readers  and  Writers 

is  capable  of  dissolving  Capitalism  in  laughter?  With- 
out questioning  the  allegorical  character  of  the  chap- 
ters referred  to,  they  may,  for  all  I  dare  say,  be  a 
perfect  anticipation  of  the  economics  of  Douglas — 
it  is  not  encouraging  to  our  present-day  Cervantes  to 
be  told  that  their  proposed  method  has  already  been 
tried  by  a  master  only  to  leave  the  dragon  of  Capi- 
talism still  to  be  tickled  to  death.  Now  one  comes 
to  think  of  it,  not  even  Chivalry,  an  even  more  un- 
doubted object  than  Capitalism  of  Cervantes's  satire, 
really  died  of  the  shock  for  the  very  good  reason 
that  it  was  dead  before  Cervantes  rained  his  laughter 
upon  it.  Even  Cervantes's  satire  killed  nothing,  and 
the  task  to  be  undertaken  for  my  correspondent  is 
therefore  greater  than  Cervantes's.  In  the  spirit  of 
Squeers,  I  can  only  suggest  that  he  who  spells  window, 
w-i-n-d-e-r,  should  clean  it.  My  correspondent, 
forward ! 

The  power  of  satire  is  usually  much  exaggerated; 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  one  of  the  least  effective  of 
psychological  weapons.  Almost  anything  can  turn  its 
edge.  Juvenal  is  not  reported  to  have  done  much 
more  than  incur  the  dislike  of  his  contemporaries ;  and 
Swift,  the  most  serious  satirist  since  Juvenal,  never 
effected  anything  but  satire  alone.  His  two  most  im- 
mediately effective  pamphlets,  the  Drapier's  Letters, 
and  the  Conduct  of  the  Allies,  contained  passages  of 
satire,  irony,  and  every  other  sort  of  appeal,  but 
neither  of  them  can  be  called  satirical  as  a  whole. 
Satire,  like  wit,  is  effective  in  small  doses  given  at  op- 
portune moments ;  but,  as  in  the  case  of  wit,  sustained 


The  "Dial"  of  America          165 

satire  defeats  its  own  object.  It  owes  what  power  it 
wields  to  the  contrast  in  which  it  stands  to  the  pre- 
vailing mood  of  the  work  in  which  it  appears:  its  un- 
expected appearance  therein.  Surprise  is  the  condi- 
tion of  its  doing  any  work  at  all.  Surely  if  this  were 
not  the  case  the  satirical  journals  of,  let  us  say,  Ger- 
many or  France,  would  have  dissolved  in  laughter 
the  vices  aimed  at  long  before  now.  But  satire  is 
expected  of  them,  is  discounted  in  advance,  and  posi- 
tively adds  to  the  attractiveness  of  the  objects 
satirized.  I  will  not  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  Cer- 
vantes recalled  dead  Chivalry  to  life  by  satirizing  it, 
though  the  crop  of  romances  that  followed  Don 
Quixote  in  England  may  almost  be  said  to  justify  (the 
charge;  but  it  can  safely  be  said  that  a  satire  directed 
against  Capitalism  would  lengthen  rather  than  con- 
tract the  life  of  the  dragon,  by  adding  amusement  to 
its  claims  to  exist. 


*** 


The  "Dial"  of  America 

The  American  Dial  is  perhaps  the  most  fully 
realized  of  all  the  promising  literary  magazines  now 
current  in  the  world.  It  is  in  all  probability  consider- 
ably in  advance  of  the  American  reading  public  for 
whom  it  is  intended,  but  it  is  all  the  better  on  that 
account.  Culture  is  always  called  upon  to  sacrifice 
popularity,  and,  usually,  even  its  existence,  in  the  in- 
terests of  civilization;  for  civilization  is  the  child  of 


1 66  Readers  and  Writers 

culture,  and  has  in  general  as  little  consideration  for 
culture  as  a  human  child  for  its  own  education.  The 
custodians  of  culture  (or  the  disinterested  pursuit  of 
human  perfection)  are  the  adults  of  the  race  of  which 
civilization  is  the  children's  school:  and,  fortunately 
or  unfortunately,  in  these  democratic  days,  their  func- 
tion is  largely  under  the  control  of  their  pupils.  Gone 
are  the  times  when  a  Brahmanic  caste  can  lay  down 
and  enforce  a  curriculum  of  education  for  its  civiliza- 
tion. Modern  civilizations  believe  themselves  to  be, 
and  possibly  are,  "old  enough"  to  exercise  their  right 
of  selecting  their  teachers.  It  cannot  be  said,  as  yet, 
that  they  exercise  their  choice  with  remarkable  dis- 
cretion, but  the  process  of  popular  self-education,  if 
slow,  may  at  any  rate  be  expected  to  be  sure.  In  any 
event  there  is  no  use  in  kicking  against  the  stars.  If 
the  forces  of  culture  are  to  rule  modern  civilizations, 
they  must  do  so  constitutionally.  The  days  of  the 
dictatorship  of  the  intelligentia  are  past. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  judgment  which  it  is  es- 
sential for  civilization  to  acquire:  judgment  of  men 
and  judgment  of  things.  Things  are  of  primary  im- 
portance, but  so  also  are  persons.  One  is  not  before 
or  after  the  other.  For  instance,  culture  itself  is  a 
"thing"  in  the  philosophic  sense;  it  is  a  reality  in  the 
world  of  ideas;  but  of  quite  equal  importance  in  our 
mixed  world  of  ideas  and  individuals,  are  the  actual 
persons  and  personalities  claiming  to  embody  and 
direct  culture.  Hence  the  transcendent  importance 
of  criticism  next  to  creation  in  both  spheres :  criticism 
of  personalities  and  criticism  of  "works."  The  mis- 


The  "Dial"  of  America          167 

taking  of  a  little  man  for  a  great  man,  or  the  reverse, 
may  easily  mean  the  delay  of  the  work  of  culture  for 
whole  generations.  And,  equally,  the  confusion  of  the 
objects  of  culture  with  the  objects  of  civilization  may 
spell  the  ruin  of  a  nation.  Few  critics  realize  the 
magnitude  and  responsibility  of  their  function,  or  the 
degree  to  which  personal  disinterestedness  is  indis- 
pensable to  its  fulfilment.  Holding  the  office  of 
inspectors  of  the  munitions  of  culture,  they  are  often 
guilty  of  "passing"  contraband  upon  the  public,  and, 
still  more  often,  of  failing  to  ensure  delivery  of  Cul- 
ture's most  effective  weapons.  More  seriousness  is 
needed,  very  much  more,  in  matters  of  criticism.  We 
must  be  capable  of  killing  if  we  are  to  be  capable  of 
giving  life. 

The  Dial  is  particularly  to  be  praised  for  its  coura- 
geous criticism  of  great  dead  Americans.  America, 
like  Europe,  suffers  from  necrophily,  a  kind  of  wor- 
ship of  the  dead.  Indeed,  as  a  good  Injun  was  syn- 
onymous with  a  dead  Injun,  a  great  American  writer  is 
usually  a  dead  American  writer.  All  his  faults  die 
with  him,  and  only  his  myth  remains,  with  the  result 
that  people  who  would  not  have  acknowledged  the 
existence  of,  let  us  say,  Whitman  living,  will  not  ac- 
knowledge a  fault  in  Whitman  dead.  For  a  nation 
thus  under  a  critical  statue  of  Mortmain,  the  utterance 
of  what  seems  like  blasphemy  is  a  necessary  part  of 
their  education.  They  must  know  that  the  dead  great, 
by  very  virtue  of  their  greatness  and  the  survival  of 
their  works,  are  still  alive  and  active,  and  that  the 
same  kind  of  criticism  must  be  kept  playing  on  them 


1 68  Readers  and  Writers 

as  upon  the  living  forces.  The  Dial  reviewers  show 
no  disposition  to  shirk  this  unpleasing  duty.  One  by 
one,  as  the  occasion  suggests,  the  dead  great  are  given 
the  honour  of  living  criticism,  and  treated  as  the 
immortal  present  which  they  are.  Since  their  spirits 
go  marching  on,  criticism  must  go  marching  along 
with  them. 

One  of  the  recently  so  honoured  dead  in  the  pages 
of  the  Dial  has  been  Whitman;  and  in  an  essay  on 
Whitman's  Love  Affairs  Mr.  Emery  Holloway  throws 
a  fresh  light  on  an  old  but  still  obscure  subject.  His 
"love  affairs"  were  obviously  more  matter  for  criti- 
cism in  Whitman  than  in  some  other  writers,  since 
Whitman  was  pre-eminently  an  autobiographical 
writer  who  sang  himself.  What,  then,  does  Mr.  Hol- 
loway find?  A  little  surprisingly — at  least  to  readers 
who  have  not  already  divined  Whitman's  secret — that 
Whitman  "suffered"  from  love,  and  struggled  against 
it  rather  as  a  raw  tyro  than  as  the  "master  of  him- 
self" of  his  poetic  fiction.  In  some  private  diaries  of 
Whitman,  quoted  by  Mr.  Holloway,  we  are  presented 
with  the  spectacle  of  Whitman  grappling  with  his  own 
soul  after  the  manner  of  saints  mortifying  the  flesh, 
or,  as  I  would  suggest,  after  the  distinctively  modern 
fashion.  Instinct  was  at  war  with  reason,  even  in 
Whitman,  and,  in  the  end,  as  usually  occurs*  with 
modern  men,  it  was  reason  that  won.  Mr.  Holloway 
divides  Whitman's  works  between  two  periods:  the 
first,  in  which  he  sang  "untrammelled  natural  im-< 
pulses";  and  a  second,  in  which  he  was  concerned  about 
democracy  and  the  immortality  of  the  soul;  in  short, 


The  "Dial"  of  America  169 

with  reason.  And  between  these  two  periods,  or 
worlds  of  discourse,  Mr.  Holloway  tells  us,  was  a  pur- 
gatory, in  which  Whitman's  soul  was  tried  as  by  fire. 
The  diaries  already  mentioned  contain  some  of  the 
records  of  Whitman's  conflict  with  himself.  Here, 
for  example,  is  an  entry  bearing  all  the  marks  of  a 
painful  resolution.  "I  must,"  he  says,  "pursue  her 
no  more"  .  .  .  and  resolve  "to  give  up  absolutely  and 
for  good,  from  this  present  hour,  the  feverish,  fluctu- 
ating, useless,  undignified  pursuit  of  164  .  .  .  avoid 
seeing  her  or  any  meeting  whatever  from  this  hour 
forth,  for  life."  The  reader  is  to  be  pitied  who  does 
not  understand,  however  dimly,  what  Whitman  must 
have  gone  through  in  imagination  and  reality  to  con- 
fide to  the  author  of  Leaves  of  Grass  such  a  shocking 
confession.  He  emerged  from  the  experience  with 
that  past  behind  him,  but  still,  I  think,  unresolved. 
For  it  was  not  his  to  reconcile  instinct  with  reason  in 
an  epigenesis;  he  passed  from  one  phase  to  the  next 
without  carrying  his  sheaves  with  him.  From  being 
within  sight  of  real  greatness,  he  declined  to  the  stat- 
ure of  a  great  American. 

Following  its  faithful  treatment  of  the  Whitman 
myth,  the  Dial  examines  the  case  of  Mark  Twain. 
It  is  undoubtedly  a  pathological  case,  and  not  only 
Mark  Twain  but  America  was  the  victim  in  it.  A 
nation  suffers  the  fate  of  its  great  men;  as  is  their 
odyssey  so  is  the  odyssey  of  the  nation  to  which  they 
belong.  Does  a  great  man  in  any  nation  become 
corrupt;  does  he  succumb  to  falsehood  and  to  the 
morality  of  the  herd?  Even  so  his  nation  is  on  the 


I  jo  Readers  and  Writers 

downward  path.  On  the  other  hand,  does  he  maintain 
his  integrity,  even  though  his  life  should  pay  for  it? 
There  is  a  sign  that  his  nation  also  will  battle  through. 
From  this  point  of  view,  Mark  Twain  presents  the 
spectacle  both  of  a  tragedy  and  a  portent.  Nobody 
can  read  his  works  without  realizing  the  essential 
truthfulness  of  the  man,  his  marvellous  capacity  for 
intellectual  honesty,  his  unerring  perception  of  the 
norm  of  things.  Mark  Twain,  permitted  and  en- 
couraged to  pass  free  judgment  upon  American  and 
human  life,  might  have  been  one  of  the  cultural  forces 
of  the  new  world;  he  was  one  of  God's  best  gifts  to 
America.  We  know,  however,  what  America  did  for 
Mark  Twain;  it  slowly  but  surely  emasculated  him 
in  the  supposed  interests  of  the  female  (not  the  fem- 
inine) in  the  American  soul.  Under  the  influence  of 
his  wife  who,  as  he  said,  not  only  "edited  everything 
I  wrote,  but  edited  me,"  under  the  similar  influence 
of  all  that  was  bourgeois  in  America — Mark  Twain 
consented  to  "make  fun"  of  everything  he  held  dear. 
Talents  and  powers  which  it  is  spiritual  death  to  trade, 
Mark  Twain  prostituted  for  the  amusement  of  a 
people  whose  deepest  need  was  high  seriousness.  As 
Mr.  Lovett  says,  Mark  Twain  "flattered  a  country 
without  art,  letters,  beauty  or  standards  to  laugh  at 
these  things."  The  judgment  is  severe,  but  it  is  just; 
and  Mark  Twain,  I  believe,  would  be  the  first  to  ac- 
quiesce in  it. 

That  he  preserved,  in  the  back  of  his  mind,  his 
spiritual  vision  and  knowledge,  there  can  be  no  doubt. 
He  sinned  not  only  against  the  light,  but  in  the  light. 


America  Regressing  171 

One  or  two  revealing  phases  in  his  works  have  escaped 
the  censorship  of  the  female  American  he  married. 
"In  our  country,"  he  said,  "we  have  three  unspeak- 
ably precious  things :  freedom  of  thought,  freedom  of 
speech,  and  the  prudence  never  to  practise  either." 
It  must  be  admitted  that  this  is  a  "snag"  in  the  smooth 
current  of  a  work  of  amusement;  it  betokened  the 
existence  of  depths  and  danger.  But  it  is  nothing  to 
the  remarks  let  off  in  conversation  on  the  rare  occa- 
sions when  the  censor  was  absent.  "I've  a  good  mind," 
he  once  said  to  a  friend,  "to  blow  the  gaff  on  the 
whole  damned  human  race."  It  is  tragedy,  indeed, 
that  he  never  did.  We  have  the  gaff  blown  on  us  all 
too  seldom,  and  usually  by  men  whose  idiosyncrasies 
and  abnormalities  allow  us  to  ignore  them.  Mark 
Twain  was  such  a  normal  man  that  his  blowing  of  the 
gaff  could  not  possibly  have  been  attributed  to  a  neu- 
rotic complex  derived  from  infantile  suppression:  it 
would  have  been  the  judgment  of  man  upon  Man.  His 
failure  to  bestow  this  inestimable  gift  upon  America 
and  the  world  we  owe  to  America,  and  if,  as  I  have 
said,  a  nation  suffers  the  fate  of  its  great  men,  we  may 
be  sure  that  America  will  pay  for  it. 


*  * 


America  Regressing 

Just  when  we  in  Europe  were  beginning  to  envy 
America  her  promise,  contrasting  it  with  the  winter  of 
our  own  discontent,  "the  authorities"  (as  one  might 


172  Readers  and  Writers 

say  the  furies,  the  parcae  or  the  weird  sisters)  have 
descended  upon  our  unfortunate  but  deserving  friend, 
the  Little  Review,  and  suspended  its  mail  servke  on 
account  of  its  publication  of  a  chapter  of  Mr.  James 
Joyce's  new  novel,  Ulysses.  That  such  an  absurd  act 
of  puritanic  spleen  should  be  possible  after  and  be- 
fore years  of  world-war  is  evidence  that  spiritual 
meanness  is  hard  to  transcend;  and  it  confirms  the 
justice  or,  at  least,  the  apprehension  expressed  in  Mr. 
Ezra  Pound's  bon  mot  that  the  U.  S.  A.  should  be  re- 
named the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  Not  only  is  the  Little  Review 
perfectly  harmless:  would  to  heaven,  indeed,  that  it 
were,  or  could  be  otherwise,  for  never  can  any  good 
be  done  by  something  incapable  of  doing  harm;  but 
the  Ulysses  of  Mr.  James  Joyce  is  one  of  the  most 
interesting  symptoms  in  the  present  literary  world, 
and  its  publication  is  very  nearly  a  public  obligation. 
Such  sincerity,  such  energy,  such  fearlessness  as  Mr. 
Joyce's  are  rare  in  any  epoch,  and  most  of  all  in  our 
own,  and  on  that  very  account  they  demand  to  be 
given  at  least  the  freedom  of  the  Press.  What  the 
giant  America  can  fear  from  Mr.  Joyce  or  from  his 
publication  in  the  Little  Review  passes  understanding. 
Abounding  in  every  variety  of  crime  and  stupidity  as 
America  is,  even  if  Ulysses  were  a  literary  crime  com- 
mitted in  a  journal  of  the  largest  circulation,  one  more 
or  less  could  not  make  much  difference  to  America. 
But  Ulysses  is  no  crime;  but  a  noble  experiment;  and 
its  suppression  will  sadden  the  virtuous  at  the  same 
time  that  it  gratifies  the  base.  America,  we  may  be 
sure,  is  not  going  to  "get  culture"  by  stamping  upon 


America  Regressing  173 

every  germ  of  new  life.  America's  present  degree  of 
cultural  toleration  may  ensure  a  herb-garden,  but  not 
a  flower  will  grow  upon  the  soil  of  Comstock. 

Among  the  scores  of  interesting  experiments  in 
composition  and  style  exhibited  in  Ulysses,  not  the 
least  novel  is  Mr.  Joyce's  attempt  to  develop  a  theory 
of  harmonics  in  language.  By  compounding  nouns 
with  adjectives  and  adjectives  with  adverbs,  Mr.  Joyce 
tries  to  convey  to  the  reader  a  complex  of  qualities 
or  ideas  simultaneously  instead  of  successively. 
"Eglintoneyes  looked  up  skybrightly."  In  such  a 
sentence  agglutination  has  been,  carried  beyond  the 
ordinary  level  of  particles  into  the  plane  of  words, 
and  the  effect  is  to  present  a  multitude  of  images  as 
if  they  were  one.  Thus  "a  new  and  complex  knowl- 
edge of  self"  finds  its  "appropriate  medium  of  ex- 
pression in  terms  of  art."  I  am  not  so  sure  that  Mr. 
Joyce  has  not  carried  the  experiment  too  far,  but  this, 
again,  is  a  virtue  rather  than  a  defect  in  a  pioneer. 
Moreover,  the  world  needs  a  few  studio-magazines 
like  the  Little  Review,  and  a  few  studio  writers  like 
Mr.  James  Joyce.  What  does  it  matter  if,  in  his  en- 
thusiasm, Mr.  Joyce  travels  beyond  the  limits  of  good 
taste,  beyond,  that  is,  the  already  cultivated,  if  only 
a  single  new  literary  convention  is  thereby  brought 
into  common  use? 


*** 


174  Readers  and  Writers 

The  Best  is  Yet  to  Be 

"One  dreams  of  a  prose,"  says  The  Times  Literary 
Supplement,  "that  has  never  yet  been  written  in  Eng- 
lish, though  the  language  is  made  for  it  and  there  are 
minds  not  incapable  of  it,  a  prose  dealing  with  the 
greatest  things  quietly  and  justly  as  men  deal  with 
them  in  their  secret  meditations  .  .  .  the  English 
Plato  is  still  to  be."  Alas,  however,  that  The  Times 
should  be  just  a  little  misled,  for  the  "quiet"  of  medi- 
tation is  not  the  real  genius  of  the  English  language, 
and  the  emphasis  in  the  phrase,  "English  Plato," 
should  be  on  the  word  English.  Greek  Plato  trans- 
lated into  English  would  not  give  us  what  we  are 
seeking.  What  we  need  is  Plato's  mind.  It  is  char- 
acteristic however,  this  demand  for  quiet,  or,  rather, 
quietism,  in  The  Times  Literary  Supplement,  since, 
on  the  whole,  the  Supplement  is  about  the  deadest 
mouse  in  the  world  of  journalism.  Above  all,  it  is 
suggested,  writers  must  keep  their  voices  low,  speak 
in  whispers,  even,  perhaps,  a  little  under  their  breath 
as  if  in  meditation,  in  case — well,  in  case  of  what? 
Is  there  not  a  hush  in  the  Literary  Supplement  which 
is  not  the  hush  of  reverence  for  literature,  but  of 
fear  and  prudence? 

Our  writer  observes  very  acutely  that  prose  is 
usually  thought  greatest  when  it  is  nearest  poetry,  and 
he  properly  dissents  from  this  common  opinion. 
Prose,  we  should  say,  can  only  be  great  as  it  differs 
from  poetry,  and  the  greatest  prose  is  furthest  away 


The  Best  is  Yet  to  Be  175 

from  poetry.  And  the  difference,  we  are  told,  is  the 
difference  between  love  and  justice.  The  cardinal  vir- 
tue of  poetry,  he  says,  is  love,  while  the  cardinal  virtue 
of  prose  is  justice.  May  we  not  rather  say  that  the 
difference  is  one  of  plane  of  consciousness,  prose  be- 
ing at  the  highest  level  of  the  rational  mind,  and  poetry 
at  the  highest  level  of  the  spiritual  mind?  Yes,  but 
then,  in  all  probability,  The  Times  would  regard  us 
as  fanciful,  for  note,  anything  exact  about  spiritual 
things  is  likely  to  be  dismissed  by  the  Literary  Supple- 
ment as  fanciful  and  dangerous.  Again,  "prose  is 
the  achievement  of  civilization";  in  other  words,  it  is 
the  norm  of  social  life.  True,  but  let  me  add  that  it 
is  the  register  of  Culture,  marking  the  degree  to  which 
Culture  has  affected  its  surrounding  civilization. 
Prose  without  poetry  is  impossible,  and  the  greatest 
prose  presupposes  the  culture  of  the  greatest  poetry, 
for  the  "justice"  of  prose  is  only  the  "love"  of  poetry 
with  seeing  eyes.  Finally,  we  must  agree  with  our  es- 
sayist when  he  quotes  with  approval  the  excellent  ob- 
servation of  Mr.  Sturge  Moore  that  "simplicity  may 
be  a  form  of  decadence."  Simplicity  is  a  sign  of 
decadence  when  it  sacrifices  profundity  of  thought  to 
simplicity  of  expression — as  in  the  classical  case  of 
Voltaire,  who  positively  dared  not  think  deeply  lest 
he  should  be  unable  to  write  clearly,  clarity  of  ex- 
pression being  more  to  him  (and  often  to  the  French 
genius  generally)  than  depth  of  thought.  And  writers 
like  Mr.  Glutton  Brock  are  just  as  certainly  symptoms 
of  the  decadence  of  simplicity  in  our  own  time  and 
place.  On  the  other  hand,  I  still  dream  of  a  pro- 


176  Readers  and  Writers 

found  simplicity,  the  style  of  which  is  transparent  over 
depths;  and  in  this,  if  no  English  writer  has  ever  been 
a  master,  Lao  Tse  is  the  world's  model,  at  least  in 
fragments.  We  must  learn  to  distinguish  between  a 
puerile  and  a  virile  simplicity,  between  innocence  and 
virtue ;  and  perhaps  the  first  exercise  in  such  judgment 
should  be  to  put  the  Literary  Supplement  in  its 
proper  place. 

This  brings  us  back  to  quietism  and  the  question 
whether  the  perfect  English  prose  would  deal  with 
the  highest  things  in  the  spirit  of  man's  secret  medi- 
tations. I  do  more  than  doubt  it.  Secret  meditation 
is  incommunicably  secret;  it  is  thought  without  words, 
and  disposed  to  poetry  rather  than  prose.  I  suspect 
our  writer  really  means  rumination,  in  which  case, 
however,  he  is  no  better  off.  For  the  genius  of  the 
language  does  not  run  easily  in  reverie,  it  is  a  language 
that  loves  action  and  life.  It  has  few  cloistered  vir- 
tues, and  to  employ  it  for  cloistered  thought  would  be 
to  use  only  one  or  two  of  its  many  stops,  and  those 
not  the  most  characteristic.  Lastly,  I  cannot  but 
think  that  the  choice  of  "quietism"  as  the  aim  of  per- 
fect English  prose  is  a  sign  of  decadence,  for  it  indi- 
cates the  will  to  retire  into  oneself,  and  to  cease  to 
"act"  by  means  of  words.  The  scene  it  calls  up  is 
familiar  and  bourgeois:  a  small  circle  of  "cultured" 
men  week-ending  in  a  luxurious  country  house  and  con- 
fessing "intimately"  their  literary  weaknesses.  It  is 
the  prevalent  atmosphere  of  the  Literary  Supplement 
and  the  Spectator.  It  is  essential  that  there  be 
"equality"  between  them,  that  none  should  presume 


The  Best  is  Yet  to  Be  177 

to  wish  to  inspire  another  to  any  "new  way  of  life," 
that  action,  in  short,  should  be  excluded.  Once 
granted  these  conditions  of  sterility,  and  the  perfect 
prose,  we  are  told,  would  emerge. 

The  rest  of  us,  however,  have  a  very  different  con- 
ception of  the  perfect  English  prose.  The  perfect 
English  prose  will  be  anything  but  a  sedative  after  a 
full  meal  of  action.  It  will  be  not  only  action  itself, 
but  the  cause  of  action,  and  its  deliberate  aim  will  be 
to  intensify  and  refine  action  and  to  raise  action  to 
the  level  of  a  fine  art.  Anything  less  than  a  real 
effect  upon  real  people  in  a  real  world  is  beneath  the 
dignity  even  of  common  prose.  The  very  "leaders" 
in  the  penny  journals  aim  at  leaving  a  mark  upon 
events.  Is  the  perfect  prose  to  be  without  hope  of 
posterity?  On  second  thoughts,  I  shall  withdraw 
Plato  from  the  position  of  model  in  which  I  put  him. 
Plato,  it  is  evident,  is  likely  to  be  abused;  without 
intending  it,  his  mood,  translated  into  English,  ap- 
pears to  be  compatible  only  with  luxurious  ease;  he 
is  read  by  modern  Epicureans.  And  I  shall  put  in 
Plato's  place  Demosthenes,  the  model  of  Swift,  the 
greatest  English  writer  the  world  has  yet  seen.  Yes, 
Demosthenes  let  it  be,  since  Plato  is  being  used  for 
balsam.  We  seek  an  English  Demosthenes. 


Index 


Adonais,   146 
"JE,"  93-107 
Andrews,    Francis,    145 
Anglo-Irish  Essays   (John  Eglin- 

ton),  55 

Apology,  The   (Plato),  75 
Appreciations   and  Depreciations 

(Boyd),  57 
Archer,   William, 
Arnold,  Matthew,   63 
Art  and  Letters,  109 
Asquith,  H.  H.,   50 
Athenaum,  The,  52    • 

Baring,  Maurice,  14 
Beardsley,  Aubrey,  91 
Beerbohm,  Max,  10 
Bell,  Clive,  52 
Benda,  Julien,  62 
Beyond    Good  and  Evil    (Nietz- 
sche), 106 

Bhagavad  Gita,  The,  29,  89 
Biographia  Literaria  (Coleridge), 

5° 

Bjornson,  B.,  15 
Blake,  William,  107 
Boutroux,  Emile,  51 
Boyd,  E.  A.,  57 

Breaking  the  Spell   (Macan),  69 
Brock,  A.  Glutton,  175 


Causes   profondes  df  la    Guerre, 

Les    (Hovelaque),  126 
Cervantes,  163 
Cheney,  L.  J.,  159 
Chesterton,  G.  K.,  43,  126 
Cicero,  75 
Clarte  Franqaise,  La    (Vannier), 

47 

Cocoon,  Thf,  157 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  15,  21,  50 

Conrad,  Joseph,  13 

Contemporary  Drama  of  Ireland 
(Boyd),  57 

Contingency  of  the  Laws  of  Na- 
ture, The  (Boutroux),  51 

Cratylus,  The   (Plato),   104 

Crees,  G.,  7 

Daily  Mail,  The,  68 

De  Quincey,  74 

Dial,   The,  165 

Distribution      of      Wealth,      The 

(Thompson),   132 
Dodd,  Professor,  149 
Don  Quixote   (Cervantes),   163 
Dostoievski,   F.,   15 
Douglas,  C.  H.,  164 
Dowson,  Ernest,  142,   162 
Drapier's    Letters,    The    (Swift), 

75,  164 
Dublin  Review,  The,  131 


Caine,  Hall,  15  "Eglinton,  John,"  55 

Candle    of    Vision,    The    ("IE"),       Egyptian  Book  of  the  Dead,  137 

93-107  Ellis,  Henry,  107 

Carlyle,  Thomas,   21  Epstein,  Jacob,   30 

179 


i8o 


Index 


Ervine,  St.  John,  57 

Essay  on  Comedy,  An  (Meredith), 

139 
Euphues,  44 

Fielding,  Henry,  112 

Flaubert,  G.,  47 

Flight  of  the  Eagle,  The  (Stan- 
dish  O'Grady),  60 

Fontenelle,  3 

Fowler,  Warde,  68 

French  Literary  Studies  (Rud- 
mose-Brown),  54 

Freud,   Professor,   102 

Funeral  Oration,  The  (Pericles), 
48 

Garnett,  Edward,  13 
Gaudier-Brzeska,  30 
Gwynn,  Stephen,  56 

Hales,  Professor,  33 
Harland,  Henry,  10 
Haumont,  M.,  14 
Heraclitus,  25 
Herford,   Professor   C.   H.,   136 

Hoare,  (.,  147 

Hobbes  of  Malmesbury,  49 

Holloway,  Emery,  168 

Homage  to   Propertius    (Pound), 

33 

Homeland    (Izzard),  68 
Hope,  John  Francis,  138 
Hovelaque,  M.,   126 
Hudson,  W.  H.,  68 

Ibsen,  Henrik,  15 

International   Journal    of   Ethics, 

The,  21 
Irish    Books     and    Irish    People 

(Gwynn),  75 
Irish  Citizen,  The,  135 
Izzard,  P.  W.  D.,  68 

James,  Henry,  9-13 


Jones,  Dr.  Ernest,  156 
Jonson,  Ben,  76 
Jowett,  B.,  49 
Joyce,  James,   31,   172 
Jung,  Professor,  156 
Juvenal,  164 

Kautsky,  K.,  19 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  146 
Kossova:    Heroic    Songs    of    the 
Serbs   (Rootham),  140 

Landor,  W.  S.,  3 

Lawrence,  D.  H.,  10 

Lay  Sermons   (Coleridge),  21 

Leaves  of  Grass  (Whitman),  169 

Leuba,  Professor,  90 

Levy,  Dr.  Oscar,  25 

Lewis,  Wyndham,  31,  36 

Little  Review,  The,  9,  31,  36,  45, 

172 

Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott,  5 
London  Mercury,  The,  123,  144 
Lovett,  R.  A.,  170 
Lycidas,  146 
Lyttelton,  Dr.,  5 

Macan,  Dr.,  69 
Mackenna,   Stephen,   15 
Mahabharata,   The,  16,  108,  137, 

161 

Manchester   Guardian,  The,  159 
Mann,  Henry,  126 
Martyn,  Edward,  58 
Marx,  Karl,   19,   131-135 
Mayne,  Ethel  Coburn,  9 
Mead,  G.  R.  S.,  50,  88,  153 
Menger,  Dr.,  132 
Meredith,  George,  8,  138,  146 
Middle      Years,      The       (Henry 

James),   n 
Mitchel,  John,  135 
Moore,  T.  Sturge,  175 
Morris,  William,  137 


Index 


181 


New  Agf,  The,  66 
Newman,  Henry,  126 
Nietzsche,    Friedrich,    17,    23-26, 
37,  39,  106 

O'Grady,  Standish,  59-61 
Oulsham,  H.  Y.,  159 

Patanjali,  106,  155 

Pater,  Walter,  162 

Pericles,  48 

Plato,  104,  174 

Plotinus,  15 

Poems  and  Prose  (Dowson),  142 

Pot-Boilers  (Clive  Bell),  52 

Pound,  Ezra,  3,  33,  36-45.  81,  172 

Pound,    Ezra:    His    Metric    and 

Poetry,  40 
Propertius,   33 
Psycho-Analysis        (Dr.       Ernest 

Jones),  156 

Queen's    College    Miscellany,    A, 

162 
Quest,  The,  50,  88 

Rahilly,  Professor  A.,  132 
Randall,  A.  E.,  88 
Richardson,  Samuel,  112 
Rootham,  Helen,  140 
Rosebery,  Lord,  50 
Rousseau,  J.  J.,  23 
Rudmose-Brown,  Professor,  54 
Russell,  Bertrand,  20 

Sayings  and  Stories  (Hoare),  147 

Sedlak,  Francis,  21 

Selected  Essays  and  Passages 
(Standish  O'Grady),  60 

Sentiments  de  Critias,  Les  (Ben- 
da),  62 

Sentimental  Journey,  A   (Sterne), 


Shakespeare,  43,  70,  122,  125 
Shankard,   16 
Shaw,  G.  Bernard,  62 
Song  of  Songs,   140 
Soundy,  W.  Mattingly,  46 
Spectator,  The,  176 
Squire,  J.   C.,  123 
Stendhal,  73 
Sterne,  Laurence,  71 
Stewart,  Herbert,  21 
Strachey,  Lytton,  46 
Swift,  Benjamin,  74,  164 
Symons,  Arthur,  91,   142 

Thompson,  William,  132 
Thoreau,  H.  D.,  55 
Times,  The,  30,  117,  124 
Times  Literary  Supplement,  The, 

115,  130,  174 

Tom  Jones   (Fielding),  113 
Turgenev,  13 
Twain,  Mark,  169 
Tweed,  John,  30 

Ulysses  (Joyce),'  32,  172 

Vannier,  M.,  47 
Vaughan,  Henry,  152 
Venture,  The,  144 
Voltaire,  175 
Vyasa,  16 

Walpole,  Horace,  81 
Wells,  H.  G.,  21 
Whitman,  Walt,  23,  168 
Whitman's  Love  Affairs   (Hollo- 
way),  1 68 
Wilde,  Oscar,  -38 
Wordsworth,  William,  95 

Yeats,  W.  B.,  107 
Yellow  Book,  The,  9 


DC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  UBRARY  F  AOUTY 


A     000138475     9 


